Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Following from that, if this amendment means that a blogger is counted if they are doing it in their professional capacity, does that mean that blogger has to be drawing a salary? Does that mean that they have to be in the employ of someone else? For a blogger to count as a journalist, does that mean they have to be a member of a registered organisation? What if the person who is the blogger operates in a number of other capacities and not just as a journalist?

Given the minister's answer, and given that, at the end of the day, some very, very serious consequences hang on this—namely, whether or not your activity online, and who you speak to or do not speak to, is going to be kept for two years, which might be of great significance to someone who is an investigative journalist and who does it in the course of being a blogger—there ought now, at least, to be some clarity as to whether or not that person counts as a journalist.

If the minister's answer is, 'If you are doing it in your professional capacity as a blogger, then you count as a journalist', can we have some clarity about what counts as a 'professional capacity'? Let's give some examples: someone who is in the employ of another organisation—are they acting in their professional capacity? Someone who is not in the employ of another organisation but this is their sole means of staying alive—are they acting in a professional capacity? Someone who does it not because they are getting paid but because they believe in what they are doing—is that someone who is doing it in their professional capacity. As the minister suggests, do you have to be otherwise employed as a journalist and someone who blogs, or can you be someone who is not separately a journalist—in the employ of the Guardian, or in the employ of Fairfax—who only blogs? Will that count?

I repeat the point for the minister: this is quite serious because this goes to whether or not that person has the capacity to know that all of the activity which they are going to be conducting online counts as private. Some very, very important questions hang on this, so, given the reference from the minister—

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