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

You never know your luck, Senator Wong. Senator Ludlam, as you rightly point out, the compliance obligation commenced today. But there is another 18 months in the implementation period to run, under the provisions of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015. Senator Ludlam, the point you raise is a point we debated in the committee stage of that debate. I acknowledge that there are some apps which will not enable metadata to be captured; that is commonly known. But that is not the point. The point of intelligence gathering is that you have to determine from all the available sources a picture of that information which is being sought by the agencies. It remains the case that metadata is a useful and a vital investigative tool.

Senator Ludlam, you ask what use it is. It is used by the Australian Federal Police and by state and territory police forces in every single counterterrorism investigation—as well as in other important investigations, for example, investigations into paedophile networks and into transnational and organised crime. While some malefactors may be sophisticated enough to use, for example, over the top applications, not all are. The advice that the Australian government has received from its security and law enforcement agencies is that metadata is one of the most important tools available to them— (Time expired)