Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not just for national security. We have required the stored data to be encrypted to ensure security and integrity of personal information. We have required, most latterly, protection of journalists' sources, and we have introduced into this legislation a role for the Ombudsman—whatever that is going to be worth, I am not sure—to give some oversights. We have worked very hard and diligently to try to put some boundaries around this thing, to retrofit a very flawed document.

There are still issues around the storage of data. There is an argument that all of this data should be stored in Australia. We know that rack space is much cheaper overseas and that there will be a major desire, if this is not fully funded by government, by telcos and ISPs to—as they do now—access that rack space overseas. That creates, for many people, a real problem. There is another argument to that, wherever we store it: whether we store it in China or Australia, the same sorts of people are going to be able to hack into it. These are complex pictures.

The joint standing committee has done what it can to allow the community some input, but there is no doubt that the community is not satisfied that they have had sufficient input into this process. There is a lot of concern. A standard critique we hear is about VPNs and other over-the-top services. If you have two clues, if you are really seriously organised crime or you are really seriously al-Qaeda or ISIS, you will be able to utilise technology to make yourself—

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