Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to continue from where I left off in this debate earlier today. The importance of our law enforcement agencies being able to access this information cannot be undervalued, but the issue they are currently faced with is that the telecommunications service providers across Australia are progressively reducing the amount of time they retain metadata, including some service providers changing their retention time frames from one year—which in this government's law and enforcement agencies' view still is not long enough—to as little as three months. This is largely because much metadata relates to a consumer's telephone or internet billing account, which telecommunications service providers destroy once they are no longer needed—for example, because the bill has been paid by the account holder.

The key aim of this bill is therefore to remove this impediment to our law enforcement agencies' ability to investigate criminal activity by creating an obligation for Australia's telecommunications service providers to retain this important data for a minimum of two years, which is in line with recommendations made in the committee's June 2013 Report on the inquiry into potential reforms of national security legislation. This two-year minimum retention period was also further endorsed in the committee's issued recommendations on this bill, which were released last Friday and endorsed in full by this government on Tuesday. This two-year retention obligation is needed to ensure that this data is not lost to our law enforcement agencies prior to a crime being brought to their attention—as has been the case in recent times: this has impeded a number of investigations and has prevented the successful prosecution of alleged criminals. I iterate the example which the Minister for Communications outlined in his second reading speech, regarding a child exploitation case in the United Kingdom where investigations relied heavily on access to telecommunications data to positively identify 240 suspects, which led to 121 arrests and convictions. This compares to 377 suspects believed to be in Germany—which does not have a data retention regime—where only seven suspects were able to be identified and there was not enough evidence to arrest or convict a single person.

Metadata plays a central role in a number of law enforcement investigations, including counter-terrorism, cybersecurity and organised crime. As I have previously highlighted, access to metadata as part of these investigations is not new. This bill does not seek to change or increase the type of metadata that the telecommunications service providers collect or that law enforcement agencies are able to access. The government only wants to see it retained for a longer period of time.

I note that the media hype surrounding these laws since their introduction in this place has put a large focus on the use of metadata for counter-terrorism purposes. Although it is important to highlight the importance of these measures for international security purposes, I do, however, also believe it is important to highlight that the retention of this data can assist our law enforcement agencies in so many other capacities, including removing those heinous criminals from our streets who seek to pervert our children and steal their innocence, as the Minister for Communications has also emphasised. These are people who, in my mind, are the worst form of humans to walk this planet.

The prevalence of child abuse and exploitation, not just in Australia but around the world, is something that members would have heard me discuss before in this place and is something that I have been proactive in raising awareness of as part of my aim to achieve zero abuse of children. As members would know, child abuse can take many forms. It has the ability to impact every person differently, both in the short and long term. Child abuse can occur through neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse or emotional abuse. On Sunday, I read an article in The Weekend Australian which further reiterated my belief that this government and communities across Australia need to do more to protect our children. One way I believe this can be achieved is through the provision of metadata to get these abhorrent individuals off our streets. I read an article entitled, 'Aussies at centre of online child-sex surge,' with dismay, revulsion and anger. As the article states:

AUSTRALIA is witnessing an explosion in online child sex exploitation, including a growing number of child sex abuse films being produced locally.

It goes on to state:

The Australian F ederal Police has recorded a 54 per cent rise in reports of online child exploitation in the past 12 months, with a record 5 617 cases directly involving Australians. This figure does not include those cases dealt with by state police.

Despite this sickness that I, and I am sure other members , feel when hearing these statistics—and when understanding the mental and physical impact this exploitation and abuse may have had on each of the children involved in the 5,617 cases the AFP have recorded—I do take this time to highlight how metadata has assisted these officers to progress their investigations and to remove these deplorable people from our communities.

In this same article in The Weekend Australian , the AFP stated that metadata has :

… played a central role in 87 per cent of child-protection cases in the first quarter of 2014-15 and this had allowed investigators to more quickly and accurately identify offenders.

As highlighted by the Attorney-General yesterday, the AFP has also advised that between July and September of 2014 telecom munications data was used in 92 per cent of count er-terrorism investigations, 100 per cent of c ybercrime investigations and 79 per cent of serious organised crime investigations. These figures demonstrate that there is a serious need for Australia's law enforcement agencies to have acce ss to this data. I believe m embers would agree that the proof of its value is evidenced by the amount of people who are sitting behind prison bars rather than being able to walk freely through our communities and commit more crimes.

As I have previously mentione d, under the provisions of the bill before the House, telecommunications service providers would be required to kee p a consistent and minimum set of metadata records for two years. Concerns have , however , been raised that the bill before the House could in some way allow more organisations to access metadata, which may create a greater potential for a person's privacy to be breached. This is despite the b ill , in fact , ensuring quite the opposite. This is because metadata can currently be accessed by a range of organisations , including local governments and the RSPCA. But the b ill before the House will instead strictly limit and reduce the range of agencies that are able to access metadata to a prescribed list of criminal law enforcement agencies. This provision has now also been further strengthened following y esterday's endorsement by this government of the c ommittee's recommendation to have this list of agencies specified in the legislation. This ultimately created an additional safeguard for cases where the g overnment may seek to add an additional agency to this prescribed list.

As the government's response to the c ommi ttee's report highlighted, the g overnment does , however , require flexibility in these matters to ensure additional criminal law enforcement agencies are able to be added quickly and efficiently where necessary. The g overnment has , therefore , proposed to endorse the c ommittee ' s recommendation with an amendment that the Attorney-General will be able to declare additional cri minal law enforcement agencies subject to the Attorney-General being satisfied on reasonable grounds that the functions of the agency to be declared include the enforcement of criminal law, administering a law imposing a pecuniary penalty or administering a law relating to the protection of the public revenue. In addition, the current list of agencies will be amended to include the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as criminal law enforcement agencies for the purposes of accessing metadata.

With respect to privacy, concerns have also been raised that there is not enough detail about how this metadata will be protected while it is being retained, and the processes for how this data would eventually be destroyed once the retention period has lapsed. The government has endorsed the committee's recommendation in this area, confirming that we will amend the bill to include an obligation to encrypt and secure data retained where possible, as part of the service provider's data retention implementation plan.

Another concern raised by the community and the media is in relation to the cost of implementin g this initiative, both to the government and to telecommunications service providers, with the total cost expected to be between $188.8 million and $319.1 million. As outlined in the government's response to the committee's recommendation to make a substantial contribution to the up - front capital costs of the implementation, the government had previously stated that it would make a reasonable contribution and has recommitted to this in its response.

Lastly, another key concern that I would like to take this opportunity to respond to is the me dia industry's claim that this bill will impede journalist s ' prot ection of sources and challenge the principle of press freedom. In this regard , I highlight that the g overnment will move an additional amendment to require agencies to obtain a warrant if they want to use metadata to identify journalists' sources , to ensure greater safeguards are afforded. The government has also endorsed the committee's recommendation in this area to have a separate review by the committee that responds to the question of how to deal with the authorisation of the disclosure or use of telecommunications data for the purpose of determining the identity of the journalist's source.

In all, there is no conspiracy here, as previously suggested by the member for Griffith, who said that this is all Labor's work. I have to deny that. This is just protection and I commend to the House the bill's intent to increase this protection even further.

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