Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am trying to work out the potential implications of that. If, for instance, a government was minded to raid a lawyer's offices on the basis that it had suspicion that that lawyer had information that the government might be wishing to gain access to and the reason that the government might have that information might be related to identification of communications between that lawyer and a particular client, whether that particular client might also be considered to possibly be a whistleblower because they have talked to a journalist or had some other interest, that would not necessarily be in relation to the content of the communication between the client and the lawyer. But certainly that information about the contact, the number of contacts, the time of contact and the fact that communication was occurring would be relevant and could indeed be useful information for a government that was intending to do that kind of investigation such as visiting lawyers' premises and looking at their files and their records.