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

In response to the honourable member's question, I can only concur with the remarks of the junior minister Karen Bradley in the UK, who was answering this very same question, as the member for Blaxland referred to earlier, and who made the point:

We accept that journalists are a special case because, for example, in investigating a leak, determining who spoke to whom may be more important than what was said, but the same argument does not apply to other sensitive professions.

The important point there is that the privilege that attaches to lawyers' advice, or the privilege that attaches to a priest's discussion with someone who is making their confession, attaches to the content, and the content is not dealt with here. We are literally only talking about the metadata, which—relevantly, in the circumstances we are talking about now—would indicate that telephone A called telephone number B at a particular time. There is no privilege attaching to that at all. There never has been.

This issue is that journalists have a special role in terms of their need to protect their communications with informants, otherwise they cannot do their work. I can say more about the extraordinary qualifications and virtues of journalists but, given my previous occupation, that might be seen as self-serving.

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