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

The criteria are not specifically set out in the act, but you may be confident that the approach that I would take—and I would expect any rational minister to take whether from the coalition or the Labor Party for that matter—would be to include categories which are similar in effect to the categories set out in the table. Senator, may I say that I am well aware of the sophistication of your knowledge of this area and I take encouragement from your observation that one thing that ought to guide us in approaching this issue is an appreciation that technology will evolve—I think you acknowledge that it might evolve quite rapidly. As technology evolves then information of a similar kind, but retained or embodied on a different platform or medium from that envisaged by the six categories of descriptions in the table, is likely to emerge. If it does then we would make—by analogy, if you like—the natural logical extensions to the six categories in the table.