Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will speak to that. This is a matter that has come up before, but there are a number of questions that the minister might be able to help the chamber with. It is a new matter in that it has not been to the committee. It was not proposed as part of the original bill. It appeared to be an afterthought. It was not in the submission, but the AFP had the opportunity at the committee hearing to raise this issue as a matter that they might want to pursue or as an additional matter. They could also have taken the opportunity when appearing before the committee on the particular day to raise it as an issue. They did not seek to. Let me also say that it is not a new matter because the AFP have asked for this or complained about this before. If the government had been minded to deal with it in this bill, it could have been put in the bill and could have allowed the committee to then deal with it. So it makes me suspicious, I have to say.

If I recall correctly, this is a matter that came up before the committee in respect of stored communications. The AFP were complaining about the difficulty they would have in ensuring that they could monitor incoming emails. I am happy for the minister or the AFP to correct me, but my understanding was that, for integrity purposes, they wanted to monitor incoming emails of law enforcement officers through their network before the intended recipients received them. It is similar to a covert application to an ISP, which would then require a warrant. That is why you effectively require an exemption in this part; otherwise, they would have to have a covert warrant—that is, a stored communication warrant—to be able to effect the same result.

Quite frankly, I did not understand why when they raised it some time ago. Clearly, they did not want to raise it because they knew the response they might have got from the committee. It seems to me that their systems for whatever reason are letting them down. What they could have done is taken this and dealt with it as part of the ACLA legislation. If it is about ensuring that there are law enforcement integrity measures in place and the network has that, they could deal with it during that time. Alternatively, you could have made it a substantive part of the original legislation.

It is not a new matter. This has been around and was looked at. I do not think that at the time they raised it the AFP saw it as a huge problem. But, if they did think it was such a problem, it surprises me that they did not bring it first. Rather, it looks like they hung back and waited to do it now. I do not know whether the minister was aware of that history of it, but I am sure that the advisers would have been. I am surprised, Minister, that you were not informed about that. If you were informed about that, I am surprised that you were a party to it.

The other issue, of course, is who has been consulted in respect of this new issue. Has the association been consulted about whether or not its members are going to be subject to this type of exception from the stored communication regime? Once you start having exceptions to a stored communication regime, where does that little bit of cotton end? You then start having a whole raft of exception regimes put in place because of other integrity measures or because other law enforcement agencies might also have the same problem. If it is a problem with the computer network, they have had years to fix it. You have certainly given them sufficient resources to be able to deal with it. I would rather have a bit more information from the minister about this. I have raised a number of issues. Some are relevant and some might have an answer. But it would be helpful to have that information before we voted on this—or we could leave that part and move on to others.