George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Wright, first of all, you said, wrongly in the contribution you just made that the bill contains new powers; the bill contains no new powers. The bill contains an obligation and it limits by three-quarters the number of agencies which can have access to metadata and it limits in various ways, which are not part of the present law, the capacity of those agencies to access that metadata. It contains new oversight measures and protections, which we debated last night, and it is a little tedious to have to repeat the point I made to you ad nauseam last night.

I should also direct your attention to proposed section 180F of the bill, which requires officers to be satisfied that access to data is proportionate, having regard to the gravity of the matter that is the subject of the investigation. I explained before that proportionality is one of the values enshrined in the act. I did not give you the section reference: there it is.