Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

Briefly, as Senator Ludwig has pointed out, these matters were raised in the committee. Indeed, the majority report came up with recommendations that the amendments pick up. For that reason alone, I would hope that the government would give the recommendations and the amendments serious consideration. I remind members, senators and the public that the recommendations were from a majority committee report—that is, the chair’s report, which was endorsed by coalition members as well as Labor members of the committee.

As I have indicated previously, the Democrats support the recommendations in the chair’s report because we believe that they perhaps ameliorate some of the worst aspects of the legislation. Particularly in light of the good work of the chair of this committee, I would hope that the government would view these amendments in a positive light. As I have said, the Democrats believe that additional amendments and, thus, additional recommendations are required. We believe that Labor amendment (2) is an important amendment because it restricts the number of agencies that will have access to the stored communication warrants to that which the bill currently allows, which is a number of state and Commonwealth statutory bodies. We are restricting that to enforcement agencies. That was discussed and recommended. It has privacy and, obviously, other accountability implications. It is a good amendment. We are dealing with the amendments cognately now but, as Senator Ludwig has indicated, we will vote on them separately.

Similarly, we support opposition amendment (12), which stops agencies other than enforcement agencies having access to stored communications warrants. Finally, amendment (3), to insert the word ‘criminal’ into the definition of a ‘serious contravention’, has the impact of specifying that the law is in relation to criminal law only. This may not necessarily be required, as the punishment provisions and definition of proscribed offences et cetera deal with this issue. But, clearly, the intent of this amendment is to isolate stored communications to criminal matters only and, as such, removes any reference to pecuniary penalties. For the reasons that Senator Ludwig outlined, we support that amendment also. So the Democrats will be supporting the Labor amendments before us.