Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to note at the outset, that this bill is invaluably complex—particularly the provisions on the data retention scheme. A number of factors have been considered by various committees and amendments have now been made to this bill. As I indicated, the bill differs greatly from the original bill introduced by the government, but this bill proposes to introduce mandatory data retention scheme, which was explored in the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in its 2013 report of the inquiry into potential reforms of Australia's national security legislation. At over 300 pages, the PJCIS report provides extensive analysis of, and commentary on, the bill and the proposed scheme more generally.

Some of the concerns raised by the PJCIS about the bill include: the appropriateness of using regulations to specify the definition and scope of data that must be retained; expansion of the category of services that will be subject to the data retention obligations; expansion of the number of criminal law enforcement and other enforcement agencies that can access the retained metadata; the length of time metadata is to be retained; the cost of the scheme; access to, and use of, retained metadata by civil litigants; the application of the Privacy Act of 1988 to all service providers covered by the scheme; the application of the scheme to offshore and over-the-top providers; and evaluation of the effectiveness of the scheme using retained metadata to identify journalists' sources. This unanimous and bipartisan report by the PJCIS made a total of 38 recommendations, and the government has accepted all of them—after what I could only refer to as the assistance of the Labor Party. There are significant recommendations in the report which provide for greater safeguards to the community.

Before I go to the detail, I would like to reflect on Senator Collins's contribution to this second reading debate. Senator Collins observed that Senator Ludlam and the Greens had launched what could only be described as a deliberately misleading and irresponsible scare campaign against this bill for what could only be considered as political purposes. Their campaign has been described by some as 'hysterical'—it is not the language I generally use—but I do think it clouds the proper debate on this bill. The criticism did provoke much excitement from Greens senators, and Senator Ludlam indicated that he disagreed with the assessment of his campaign. I share the view that Senator Ludlam's campaign against data retention has been over the top and has not always relied on facts. Perhaps the best example of Senator Ludlam's hysteria is a rap video that he appeared in regarding data retention. This video claimed that data retention was—