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

Senator Ludlam, as you have acknowledged, the definition of the description of the categories of metadata has been located in the bill. The government has done that, having considered the recommendations of the PJCIS, and it now forms proposed section 187AA.

Proposed section 187AA sets out in descriptive terms six different categories. In the event, because of changes in technology, technologies develop or emerge in which information of the kind referred to in those six broad categories are retained and those technologies answer the description of metadata, then the bill preserves the flexibility in using the mechanism to which you have adverted of expanding the definition. The purpose here is not to expand the scope of that which is the subject of the retention obligation but rather to give the government the flexibility to keep pace with evolving technology so that, if there is an evolution so that a currently unanticipated form of metadata were to emerge following the development, for example, or a new device or a new form of communication, then that could be added to the list subject to the approval of the parliament after the requisite 40-day sitting day period. It is not the intention to alter the nature of the categories merely to enable us to have the flexibility to contemporise the description of the way in which metadata falling within those categories is retained.