Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and note his chairmanship of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, to which the bill that I introduced into the House this morning has been referred.

In 2013 the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security concluded that there was a diminution, a reduction in the availability of metadata to enable our law enforcement agencies to do their work of protecting us from criminals—criminals in both the run-of-the-mill sort of line of work and also, of course, terrorism. Metadata does not include the content of communications, and it is absolutely critical that we make this clear. For many years—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

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