Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I will respond very briefly to the member for Chifley. This matter of costs is dealt with in recommendation 16 of the joint committee. The government is committed to paying a substantial portion of the capex, the implementation costs, for this data retention scheme. I made that very clear in the second reading speech. We will take into account each of the seven factors identified by the committee. They include, firstly, providing sufficient support for smaller service providers that do not have the same massive capital budgets that Telstra or Optus do, for example. Obviously operating costs once the system is set up will be reimbursed on a cost recovery basis, as is currently the case.

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