Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Holt for that question, though I am not sure whether he started there with a barb about my un-inspirational delivery! But I will give him the benefit of the doubt, because that is a sensible question and one which the government is seriously considering. As you appreciate, I am representing the Attorney-General here today, and this matter would fall within his portfolio jurisdiction. But it is something that I take a keen interest in, obviously, as the minister with responsibility for the Australian Federal Police, and the police of course are very concerned about this and have been making representations to the government. He would understand the content of the representations because he would have seen their submissions to his committee. I must say that that committee does do very serious and sensible work, and when that committee makes recommendations to the government we take those recommendations seriously. I understand that the Attorney-General is looking at those recommendations at the moment.

It is very important that we have a regime in Australia which complements our national security and also helps our criminal justice agencies to do their job. I appreciate that, in the environment in which we live at the moment, there is a lot of myth and concern about this idea that somehow the state might be snooping on people. Everything we do in the law and order area and in the national security area when it comes to data retention and communications is to make the Australian people safer, and that is the absolute and primary objective that we will have in responding to his committee's recommendations. We need to look at these things sensibly. What we are doing is important for community safety, and I will not pre-empt that response to the committee, and I am not actually privy to that response in totality yet. But we do take the committee's recommendations seriously, and we do take the safety of the Australian people seriously.

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