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

The short answer, as the honourable member knows, is that ASIO warrants have always been issued by the minister, so there is absolutely no change from that practice. The change in respect of accessing metadata, a warrant relating to a journalist and his sources, is that a warrant is needed at all. So, from the perspective of the honourable member, as a I divine it, this is a considerable improvement. If his objection is that the minister, the Attorney-General, should not be issuing warrants in respect of applications by ASIO then that is a much bigger question that relates to the whole range of warrants that the organisation may be seeking. As far as the role of the minister vis-a-vis ASIO and warrants is concerned, this is very much status quo.

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