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

Senator Leyonhjelm, the answer to your question, if I understand you correctly, is proposed section 187A(4). Although proposed section 187AA(2) gives the minister the power by legislative instrument and subject to the requirement of parliamentary assent within 40 sitting days to modify the description of the dataset in the table subjacent to proposed section 187AA(1), a minister may never, by legislative instrument or any form of delegated legislation, derogate from the statute itself. The fundamental distinction between content and information about a communication, or metadata, is preserved in particular by proposed subsection (4) of proposed section 187A, so that the extension of the reach of the act to content, which is prohibited by that section, would never be derogated from or varied by ministerial declaration under proposed section 187AA(2) by an amendment to the dataset, because the description of dataset is subject to that overarching statutory limitation.