Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. In July 2017 a terrorist plot to blow out of the sky an Etihad airliner whilst en route from Sydney to Abu Dhabi went undetected for four months because of the use of encrypted applications. In fact, in this case it was the encrypted messaging app Telegram. Australia's outstanding intelligence and police agencies are simply fighting a numbers game—and we can't be any more honest with the Australian people than to say that it is a numbers game—in their efforts to keep Australians safe. Those numbers are sobering and they speak for themselves: 15 terror plots have now been prevented; seven terror attacks have, sadly, been completed and, tragically, have seen the loss of multiple Australian lives. Our government has legislated 12 tranches of very significant changes to our national security legislation, and the parliament will be tasked this week with perhaps the most critical of all those changes in recent years—that is, the assistance and access bill. That is the only way that we can help our security agencies and police prevent terrorist attacks like the one that, tragically, we saw occur in Bourke Street in Victoria. The No. 1 priority of this government is keeping Australians safe, and dealing with the criminal use of encryption is the most urgent and important change that is required to keep Australians safe.

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