Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

On the last point that was raised by the member for Melbourne, the issue of where data stored under this mandatory data retention scheme is actually physically stored is a concern to Labor. It is something we raised in the course of the deliberations of the committee, it is something that has been raised publicly by a range of interested parties and, indeed, it is something that was commented on publicly by the former Director-General of ASIO, a very eminent Director-General of ASIO, David Irvine, just in the last few days, with David Irvine expressing his own view that it was appropriate for data that is stored under this scheme to be stored in Australia. I think he described himself as a 'cyber nationalist', but certainly expressing the view that it was not appropriate that the storage of data be governed by some other country's sovereign legislation but not be governed by our own. It is something that was not appropriately able to be dealt with directly in this legislation that is before the House, because there has been, under a process commenced by Labor in government, a process called the telecommunications sector security reform, which will come to a conclusion. In his second reading speech, at the commencement of parliamentary consideration of this bill, the Minister for Communications noted that that process was coming to a conclusion and is likely to be completed before the end of the implementation phase of this data retention scheme. Labor's view is that this is an important matter, but that it is something that is more appropriately dealt with as part of the larger reform known as the telecommunications sector security reform. That was a reform investigated, commented on and recommended on by the intelligence committee in its report in 2013. It will cover a much wider range of matters concerned with telecommunications sector security than simply the question of storage of retained data. Nevertheless, that telecommunications sector security reform process is the right place to deal with this legislation, and following on from that is the right place to deal with the question of location of storage. Labor intends to keep a very close eye on that process and, when that matter comes before the parliament, we will certainly be insisting on onshore storage of data retained under this scheme.

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