George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I do not think you are being provocative, Senator Xenophon. I hope nothing I have said causes you to be fearful that I think you are being provocative. I think you are asking constructive questions in a genuine spirit of inquiry, if I may say so. I do not have much time to read The New Yorker. What little time I have to read magazines I devote to reading The Spectator. Therefore, I have not read the article to which you have referred in your question and I cannot comment on it.

You seem to be making two points, as I understand you. The first point is whether the fact that, in most terrorist outrages in recent years, the perpetrators were known to authorities means that access to metadata is not of utility. The answer to that question is that, although in some cases what you say is true, in other cases it is not true. For example, in the outrage that we suffered in Australia in Martin Place last December, Man Haron Monis was known to the authorities, but he was not known to the authorities as a terrorism suspect. He was not considered to be assessed by the authorities to be somebody who they appreciated was likely to commit a crime of the kind that he committed. So, although he was on their radar, it was not in that capacity, which is why he was not on a so-called watch list.