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

Well, as I have said to you, Senator Xenophon, I have not read Mr Burgess's remarks. So you may wish to interrogate me about them, but I have nothing to say about them without having read them. That being said, my response to the point you make is, as I said earlier, that this legislation standardises an industry practice. There are, in relation to the retention and metadata, variable practices across industry, both as to the length of time for which data is retained—as I said before, in some cases up to seven years—and as to the particular metadata that is retained, so that there will be some telecommunications companies or internet service providers that retain a particular dataset; there will be others that retain a somewhat differently described dataset. There is a variable practice. The effect of this legislation is to standardise that practice, both as to that which is required to be retained and the length of time for which it is required to be retained. That said, I repeat, Senator Xenophon, that the effect of the legislation is to freeze the status quo. When you standardise something where the practice is variable, obviously, in standardising that practice, there will be required of some companies greater or lesser obligations than they might currently observe. But, as a general proposition, the obligation contained in proposed section 187AA reflects practice across the industry. That is what the legislation requires the relevant members of the industry to observe in respect of their own companies.