Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Australian Greens amendments (8) and (9) on sheet 7669:

(8) Schedule 1, item 1, page 13 (after line 19), after subsection 187G(1), insert:

Copy of any comments must be given to service provider

  (1A) If the Communications Access Co-ordinator receives a comment from an enforcement agency or security authority on a data retention implementation plan, the Co-ordinator must give the service provider a copy of the comment as soon as practicable.

(9) Schedule 1, item 1, page 13 (lines 20 to 31), omit subsection 187G(2), substitute:

Request for amendment of original plan

(2) If:

  (a) the Communications Access Co-ordinator receives a comment from an enforcement agency or security authority requesting an amendment of the original plan; and

  (b) the Co-ordinator considers the request to be a reasonable one;

the Co-ordinator must request that the service provider make the amendment within 30 days (the response period) after receiving the comment or summary.

Note:    The Communications Access Co-ordinator must give the service provider a copy of the comment as soon as practicable, see subsection (1).

The bill sets up a new office of the Communications Access Coordinator, which will be responsible for accepting the plans which telcos make to implement the data retention legislation, and the ACMA works with it on adjudication. I think that is the only role, really, that the ACMA plays—that is, compliance. Plans submitted by telcos for implementing the legislation would be sent to law enforcement agencies for comment, meaning that law enforcement would have a direct say in how these plans were implemented and a certain degree of subsequent control over how they operate. The feedback would not be made public and it would not even necessarily be made available to the service providers, meaning that the law enforcement agencies would have a behind-closed-doors feedback loop on how the data retention legislation would be implemented.

This amendment would resolve that situation. It does not require publication. I kind of buy the argument, if the Attorney-General is prepared to run it, that the publication of these things would probably be quite risky. But at the very least, give the telcos copies of the feedback that has been provided by the law enforcement agencies. Otherwise, you effectively have ASIO and a suite of other agencies—albeit a narrower range of agencies that can access this material now—being able to reach into the back office operations of every telecommunications service provider in the country and tell them how to run their affairs. For a government obsessed with deregulation, it is a remarkable reregulation of the telecommunications sector that particular companies could find themselves and their implementation plans effectively vetoed and forced to make certain changes without getting to see exactly what it is that is wrong with the proposals that they have put forward. In order to assist compliance with a bill like this, which many of these operators reject and have campaigned against quite strenuously, for reasons that are pretty obvious to everybody, it is remarkable that the government does not propose that those plans are at least returned to the telcos. I commend the amendment to the chamber.