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

Although I know Mr Burgess, and I acknowledge his long and deep experience in this field, I have not seen his remarks. It is not my practice to comment on remarks that are quoted to me that I have not seen. That having been said, you do paraphrase me accurately. This is an obligation to maintain the status quo. It is also an obligation to regularise and standardise that which is done across the industry. As I said last night in response to the question from one of the crossbench senators, there is no uniform, consistent data-retention period across the industry. According to evidence given to the PJCIS inquiry by one of the witnesses in relation to telephony, some telecommunications companies currently retain data for up to seven years, and some retain data for periods less than two years. So, in routinising and standardising the data retention obligation period to two years, in some cases we are reducing the retention period from the status quo, in some cases we are extending the data retention period from the status quo. We are not changing the character of the obligation. Let me rephrase that: the obligation that this legislation imposes does not change the character of the commercial practice from that in which the ISPs and telecoms have engaged, but it does standardise it.