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

As Senator Ludlam has pointed out, the government does not support the amendment. The government does not consider that defining what constitutes network protection duties in the manner suggested will clarify the scope of the definition. The concept as it currently stands, in the government’s view, is sufficiently flexible to apply equally to small and large entities. The problem that we would perceive—and this would not be the only issue—is that a prescriptive definition runs the risk of inadvertently limiting the range of activities currently engaged in by individual entities. Such drafting would also be inconsistent with the rest of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, because it is structured on the basis of being technologically neutral, and any variation to this language runs the risk of obsolescence as technology changes. Furthermore, any attempt to define activities covered by the definition itself does raise definitional issues. For instance, the use of the word ‘security’ is problematic as it has a particular meaning under the interception act. For those reasons the government does not support the amendment.