Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and the Crimes Act 1914 to ensure key provisions operate as intended. It also makes technical amendments flowing from the government's decision to reconstitute the Home Affairs portfolio following the federal election.

Schedule 1 to the bill permits protected network activity warrant and warrant intercept information to be used, communicated and recorded to meet disclosure obligations. It also allows the information to be admitted in evidence where necessary to ensure the defensible prosecution of criminal activity while retaining the intelligence-only purpose of network activity warrants.

Schedule 2 amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to transfer the statutory functions of the Communications Access Coordinator from the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department to the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs. This change is only necessary because the Albanese Labor government dismantled the Home Affairs portfolio after the 2022 election. Following the 2025 election the Albanese Labor government restored the Home Affairs portfolio to the original structure established under the coalition by returning the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre to the Home Affairs portfolio. This came after the coalition took this commitment to the election while Labor made no such commitment. The decision to reconstitute the Home Affairs portfolio following the election and the Prime Minister's election acknowledgement that there were issues with information-sharing during the Dural caravan incident are an admission that the national security architecture he put in place failed at a critical time. The government should apologise for putting party politics over Australia's national security by changing the Home Affairs portfolio three times in three years in a pointless, factional tug-of-war.

Schedule 3 amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to permit limited access to stored communications to allow agencies to undertake development and testing activities in circumstances where they otherwise would have been authorised to intercept the same communication if it were still passing over the telecommunication system. These changes will ensure the framework remains fit for purpose in the modern operating environment where stored communications may pass over the telecommunication system alongside and become indistinguishable from live communications.

Schedule 4 corrects a technical issue with the operation of interception international production orders in the T(IA) Act that was preventing international production orders from being given to US based prescribed communication providers in certain circumstances under the agreement between the government of Australia and the government of the United States of America on access to electronic data for the purpose of countering serious crime. The amendments clarify that interception orders issued to Australian law enforcement and national security agencies may be used to obtain prospective content data from communications providers in a country with which Australia has a designated international agreement regardless of the technical method by which that prospective data is sent to the agency.

Schedule 5 amends the Crimes Act to clarify the threshold for authorising and varying controlled operations in the circumstances in which a participant is protected from criminal responsibility and indemnified against civil liability. The anonymous nature of online crime means law enforcement may lack information to assess potential risks when deciding whether to authorise or vary a controlled operation. The amendments will clarify that authorising officers must consider the indirect and reasonable foreseeable consequences of controlled conduct when varying a controlled operation.

Schedule 5 also provides clarity around legal protections for officers involved in undercover operations targeted at taking down sexual abuse syndicates. In the 2024-25 financial year the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation's Child Protection Triage Unit received 82,764 reports of online child sexual exploitation. I just want to underscore that by saying it again. The ACCCE received 82,764 reports of online sexual exploitation in a single year. That equates to an average of 226 reports per day. The need for strong action against these predators has never been more acute. These amendments ensure the law is fit for purpose in addressing the most abhorrent online crimes where the persons under investigation are anonymised, including on the dark web and encrypted communications platforms.

The changes in the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill provide essential clarifications to ensure that the agencies that keep our nation safe can continue to do so in an era of rapid technological development. The coalition will always support sensible reforms which ensure that the men and women serving in intelligence and law enforcement roles have the tools they need to take down criminals no matter where they are hiding. We will be supporting this bill without amendment.

Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to begin this speech by acknowledging the outstanding work of the individual Australians who work for our security agencies. Often faced with challenging, complex and disturbing situations, these Australians turn up to work every day in order to serve their fellow countrymen and countrywomen by taking steps to keep us safe, to investigate matters and to ensure that perpetrators of horrific offences can be brought to justice and that the victims of these offences feel heard and can try to move forward with their lives in the knowledge that action is being taken to prevent the same things happening to others.

This bill, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, sets forth a number of very technical amendments that recognise that we are in an era of rapid and constantly changing and evolving technological and cyber development and that law enforcement agencies are being expected to operate in this challenging environment whilst remaining charged with the very serious obligation to protect Australians. More specifically, this bill makes technical amendments to the Surveillance Devices Act 2004, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and the Crimes Act 1914. These amendments are required to clarify or correct provisions in Australia's electronic surveillance and law enforcement frameworks, particularly when they have been rendered less effective due to technological change. The amendments are set out in the various schedules to the bill.

Firstly, schedule 1 sets out the proposed amendments to the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. The amendments have the effect of enabling agencies and prosecutors to disclose information obtained under network activity warrants for the purposes of complying with their disclosure obligations in a prosecution for a relevant offence. For clarity, network activity warrants are used for the collection of intelligence that relates to criminal networks operating online. Without these amendments, the current disclosure arrangements would remain in place. This current regime prohibits disclosure of information obtained pursuant to a network activity warrant, which not only limits the prosecution but presents an access-to-justice issue in that individuals may be denied the opportunity to receive a fair trial. This is because those individuals in relation to whom information is obtained pursuant to a network activity warrant do not currently have access to it, which is unfair if the evidence and information obtained through these warrants may assist those people in their own defence. So these changes promote the Commonwealth's compliance with the duty of disclosure that it owes to courts in relation to network activity warrant information. Quite understandably and quite rightly, disclosure of this information will remain limited and subject to strict safeguards, but these amendments deliver the required clarity so that the Commonwealth can provide necessary information to facilitate the defensible prosecution of serious criminal activity.

Then we have the amendments set out in schedule 2, which relate to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. This amendment seeks to transfer the regulatory role of the Communications Access Coordinator from the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department to the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs. It does this to reflect postelection machinery-of-government changes. The Communications Access Coordinator is responsible for liaising between state and Commonwealth security and law enforcement agencies, the Commonwealth telecommunications regulator and the telecommunications industry. It is a function that also supports industry to understand and comply with relevant interception capability obligations under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979.

Moving to schedule 3, these amendments are technical in nature and apply to that same act to ensure that the framework for testing and developing technologies and interception capabilities can operate in the manner that parliament intended. They are designed to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to facilitate the proper development and testing of new capabilities by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Specifically, the Attorney-General will be empowered to authorise agencies to access communications that are stored in like circumstances where they would have been authorised to intercept these communications when they were live, but only for the purpose of developing and testing technologies and interception capabilities.

The difference this amendment makes is that currently only live communications can be used by agencies for testing and development purposes. Stored communications may pass over the telecommunications system alongside live communications. At the point of interception, these stored communications are indistinguishable from live communications—for example, when emails are synced between two devices at the same time as messages are being transmitted between them.

This crossover is occurring because technological advancements are facilitating it. That being the case in these circumstances, and because of this indistinguishability, access to stored communications cannot be avoided. That is why agencies require authorisation to access both live communications and stored communications for testing and development purposes. Stored communications that are accessed for this purpose will follow authorisation from the Attorney-General and can be used only for that purpose and for no other purpose. Importantly, they cannot be used for intelligence purposes, investigative purposes or anything else. As for this ring fenced purpose, stored communications that are accessed pursuant to this schedule 3 amendment will be treated no differently to live communications.

Moving to schedule 4 to the bill, this schedule operates to amend the international production order framework in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, with the motivation for the amendment being to give effect to the original intent of this regime. The international production order framework in that act is found in schedule 1. It is a framework that permits Australia to enter into agreements with other countries to share electronic information for the purposes of countering serious crime. An example is the Australia-US data access agreement signed in 2021, which facilitates Australian and United States law enforcement and national security agencies to obtain orders for data held by communication service providers in the partner nation without the need for separate review and authorisation. These arrangements operate to improve the overall effectiveness of Australian and United States investigations and prosecutions of serious crimes.

An international production order can be issued for the purpose of enforcing criminal law to monitor persons subject to supervisory orders and for national security reasons. Information that is covered by an international production order includes live and stored communications and telecommunications data. Examples include files uploaded to a storage or backup service, emails and chat history, in addition to the related information to those communications.

International production orders are an important tool in the toolbox that Australia has at its disposal to prosecute serious crimes. The amendments proposed by schedule 4 to this bill will provide certainty that interception orders issued to Australian law enforcement and national security agencies may be used to obtain prospective content data from communications providers in a country with which Australia has a designated international agreement, regardless of the technical method by which that prospective data is sent to the agency. In plain language, these amendments will make the international production order regime more technology neutral, ensuring that Australian agencies' use of these powers is available to request access to communications held by a US communications provider now and into the future, regardless of the technical methods that those providers use to access communications, all subject to the current safeguards in the framework.

Finally, there is schedule 5 to the bill. This schedule proposes amendments to the Crimes Act 1914 to clarify and strengthen safeguards in the controlled operations provisions framework. Pursuant to section 15GD of the Crimes Act:

A controlled operation is an operation that:

(a) involves the participation of law enforcement officers; and

(b) is carried out for the purpose of obtaining evidence that may lead to the prosecution of a person for a serious Commonwealth offence or a serious State offence that has a federal aspect; and

(c) may involve a law enforcement officer or other person in conduct that would, apart from section 15HA, constitute a Commonwealth offence or an offence against a law of a State or Territory.

Controlled operations might include infiltrating serious and organised crime groups, identifying and rescuing victims of abuse or gathering evidence for the prosecution of serious offences, including in relation to online sexual abuse syndicates. Plainly, controlled operations involve serious risks and must therefore be appropriately safeguarded. The nature and development of the online world have meant the prevalence of the crimes committed while facilitated online is increasing. Perpetrators can hide on the internet, and they do so in sophisticated manners, making it difficult to gather information and difficult to assess the risks when determining whether a controlled operation should proceed or be varied. Authorising officers currently have insufficient guidelines as to the extent to which they are expected to foresee potential risks and not authorise or vary a controlled operation in the context of these risks.

The amendments proposed by schedule 5 oblige authorising officers to consider the direct and reasonably foreseeable consequences of controlled conduct when authorising or burying a controlled operation instead of any conduct of third parties, as was the original intent of these thresholds. Critically, the proposed amendments set out in schedule 5 provide clearer legal protections for officers who are participating in undercover operations designed to disrupt and take down sexual abuse syndicates. A sobering statistic is that, in the 2023-2024 financial year alone, reports of online child exploitation to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation increased by 45 per cent from the previous year. So officers doing this challenging and sometimes horrific work need to be able to do it without fear of personal liability.

Full and fearless investigations are the only way these sorts of crimes can be investigated and the only way mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate the further perpetration of these crimes can be implemented. Therefore, the proposed framework will retain the appropriate carve-outs for liability protections where officers engage in otherwise illegal behaviour not pursuant to an approved control operation and where their conduct is likely to cause the death or serious injury of a person or where their conduct would involve the commission of a sexual offence against a person. Without these amendments, law enforcement agencies will lack the confidence and agency to authorise and deploy controlled operations in online spaces, particularly as they relate to the investigation and disruption of child sexual abuse syndicates.

In commending this bill to the House, I finish by again expressing my deepest gratitude to those who do this work in service to their fellow Australians.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) | Link to this | Hansard source

In the era of national security, all legislation is, of course, enormously important, but it's also equally important that we scrutinise all pieces of legislation to make sure there is not needless overreach and to make sure this parliament is always getting the balance right. We all believe in the importance of human freedom and dignity but also in making sure that we have a secure environment and making sure that we have appropriate crackdowns on those people who wish our community and our society harm—particularly those who are most vulnerable, children in particular—and those who want to perpetrate sexual violence and harm. That's the basis on which this legislation, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, has been put forward to this parliament.

I will have served in this parliament now for six years in about five months, with a little bit of a gap in between some of that tenure, and have served on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, including with the current Minister for Small Business, who is sitting at the table opposite me. One of the challenges you confront—and it's a difficult thing to confront—is that, because we have an enormous amount of faith and hope in our country and our fellow citizens, sometimes some of our fellow citizens fall short. I don't just mean fall short. Sometimes they fall short in a very large way, and we see the dark depths of humanity. When we find those dark depths and when our agencies that are charged responsible for making sure those people are held accountable, we need to make sure that they have the laws and tools available to them. We need them to be able to go into those deep, dark recesses, particularly online and through telecommunication platforms, to find them; to make sure the content they are producing, what it is they are doing and the harm they are doing, particularly against those who are vulnerable, can be exposed and brought into the sunlight; and to make sure that there's a full pathway for prosecution.

That's why legislation like this matters. What we're actually doing is empowering our agencies—whether they're Federal Police or other intelligence organisations or whether they're working across international borders—to be able to go into places like the dark web and discover the deep, dark realities and the shortcomings of humanity. This legislation is very important because it's a tragedy that, when you engage in some of the responsibilities that you must engage in in this office that we all hold in our different capacities, you see what humanity is capable of. More importantly, you see how people will treat the most vulnerable, in particular children—whether it's sexual crimes, abuse or sexual violence—the content people will create, capture or distribute; and the different mechanisms by which they connect with other people who find satisfaction through such crimes.

Of course, we in the opposition are supporting this legislation because we understand how important it is to protect children and, of course, anyone else who is at the end of sexual violence, sexual crimes or any other type of violent crime where people perpetuate or use telecommunications as a mechanism to do harm. It's more important because we understand how much technology has become an enabler of some of the most distressing parts of increased crime. There are lots of different challenges that are now being presented. We know that telecommunications is a very significant part of the networks that organised crime uses. It's a very important part of how terrorist organisations connect with each other, whether it's through mechanisms of distribution of finance, distributing information to others around the promotion and propagation of the information about their crimes, or pathways of coordination for their various different attacks. It's also for other types of harm, where people use telecommunications as a mechanism to distribute the consequences of their criminal conduct and to be able to send it out to consumers as well.

As we use technology to identify pathways to address what might be through traditional channels, what we see more and more of is telecommunications pathways going deeper and darker into the recesses of the internet, beneath the things that you or I, or average people, would use to be able to distribute that information. The consequence of that is that the powers our agencies need to crack down on it are becoming much more substantial. They need powers so they can access information, and they need pathways to represent others and be in a position to get information from people so that they can provide the evidentiary basis to go through to points of identification and prosecution. We have dealt with this before on the intelligence and security committee, when I was on it. Some of the legislative measures have continued to evolve and take time; that includes what is presented before the parliament today. It's also something we on this side of the chamber, leading up to the last election, said we would be very aggressive in continuing to pursue, particularly around mandatory minimum sentences, particularly when telecommunications devices are used for things like sexual violence and crime, particularly against women. We understand how much it can become an enabler, how much we see it as a significant and serious threat into the future and how we need to take these issues very seriously.

Sitting behind anything that happens in the online world is something that's actually happening in the real world. When the online world becomes an enabler of crime, it's becoming an enabler of crime in the real world. And sitting behind every one of those stories are real people—often, as I've said before, some of the most vulnerable within our community. So it's extremely important that we give the agencies the powers they need to be able to crack down on these types of crimes. More important than that, because telecommunications are not limited solely to what goes on within in the domestic boundaries of our great Commonwealth, is that we also need to make sure that our agencies have the capacity to access data and information that transcends our national boundaries.

This has been one of the biggest challenges for our agencies working with other governments and police force counterparts around the world. Once you leave Australia's national boundaries, so ends Australian national law. So we have partnerships, agreements and arrangements with governments and agencies in other countries to be able to information-share on a voluntary basis where we find it fruitful to do so. With some countries, we're not necessarily in the best position to have those arrangements, but there are countries where we can do it if we come to terms and work with their governments on a mutually beneficial basis. We have agreements in place with the United States, of course, which is of incredible importance, particularly for the infrastructure they have as part of the internet.

But there are countries we should have arrangements with or that we wish we had arrangements with because they are the harbours of so much illicit and illegal content on the internet. I think of countries like Russia, North Korea and so many others. They use themselves as safe havens for criminal activities. We know they do. They know they do. They become enablers of criminal activity which directly harms not just Australians, although Australians are caught up in it; they become enablers of criminal activity that has an impact on people in every nation around this world. Because of their role aboveboard and on the dark web, we're in a situation where they allow the criminals to write the rules, not the law-abiding citizens and democratic governments standing up for safety, for justice and for protecting the vulnerable.

Whatever our differences, I would hope that everybody in this chamber and this parliament fundamentally believes that the role of this parliament—the government that represents the people of Australia—is to make sure that we defend the best interests of those who cannot speak for themselves and that we stand up and say that there is no place on online platforms for things like sexual violence and sexual crimes against children. I am fully extending that with the absolute intent that that is the view of the government and that we need to bring forward the powers for our agencies and police to do everything to stamp that out. That's the basis on which, in a bipartisan way, we are supporting this legislation. We actually understand just how important it is to take these steps, because of the human impact that sits behind it.

Telecommunications powers matter. Getting them right matters. This legislation matters for the reasons I've outlined. That doesn't mean the government always get things right. We know and have lived with, in recent weeks, a situation where Australians have lost their lives as a direct consequence of what happens when the government—through intransigence, indifference or apparently because the minister is new—does not have the proper arrangements in place around telecommunications powers where Australians want to do simple things like dial triple 0 to be connected to an emergency service so that they can get the support they desperately need in a moment of health crisis. If they don't get that help, tragically, people die.

Triple 0—zero, zero, zero—represents the absence of the heartbeats of the lives lost. It should be one, one, one for the people who are still alive. One of the most disappointing things that we heard in question time today was how the minister responsible didn't see it as her responsibility. We heard the minister being quite happy to pass the buck to the telecommunications company as a way of avoidance and to accept that that number of Australians who desperately needed support in past weeks amounted to their lives being worth zero, zero, zero.

It's very sobering, because we all depend on telecommunications these days. We all desperately need the support and services. When the services are there, we need them to work for us. We need them to be able to do the task of protecting us, to secure the services we need, to empower Australians—whether it's access to health services or whether it's through crime and support and security. There are times in my electorate where people call the local police station, and they can't even get connected. There are times when they're using their mobile telephony across this country and expect to get access, but they can't even connect to a local telephone tower. This is a common complaint of members, particularly those from rural and regional Australia, but I can tell you that it happens even in the Goldstein electorate.

When it comes to the powers that this parliament affords our agencies, including the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and others, we want to be confident that, when those agencies are going after criminals, working with partners overseas, they are able to find people who are perpetuating harm—people who are committing crimes against children, against women or against any person, particularly where they're using nefarious recording of information, often involving sexual violence, sexual crimes—and that they can find that content and shut it down. This is not an unreasonable expectation. It is, in fact, exactly what everybody in this parliament should seek.

My hope is that, by passing this legislation, it will not be the end of this discussion—sadly, it will not be the end because, tragically, we see the dark depths of humanity in these conversations—but a continuation of the commitment from this parliament that we are serious about finding every pathway to crack down on those people who wish our fellow citizens harm and, more importantly, that we work with agencies around the world to stop the tragedy of those in our country who aid and assist other people in the commitment of their sexual violence and their sexual crimes and help bring them to justice as well.

This is a common cause of humanity. We should make sure that the internet and technology do not become, any more than absolutely necessary—the answer is it's never necessary, absolutely never—a pathway or an enabler to cause harm against those who cannot stand up or speak for themselves. That's why we support this legislation.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Anything that can make Australia's telecommunications even more watertight—the security thereof—has to be commended and supported, and the coalition does support the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It's important legislation. As you've just heard from the member for Goldstein, our national security is vital. Obviously, what we need to do in the space of child exploitation through sex trafficking, particularly in the Philippines and South-East Asia, is crack on those nefarious characters who use telecommunications devices and other ways and means to do the wrong thing and to do great harm not only to children but, indeed, also to our nation's reputation.

I know, from when I was the shadow minister for the Pacific and international development, that the greatest exploiters of child sex trafficking in these areas were Australians, and that is very sad to say; it is abhorrent. Anything in this bill that can amend that, fix that, eradicate that has got to be seen as a good thing.

There was recently an article on SmartCompany, written by Morganne Kopittke, in relation to investment and false-billing scams costing small businesses $25 million. In the very well-researched article, the journalist wrote that Australian small businesses have lost just over $25 million to scams in two years, with investment scams and false billing pinpointed as the biggest drains on their bank accounts. You get this wrong image that criminal activity, when it is blue collar—if I could put it that way—is really bad but white-collar crime is in some way forgivable. In many ways, when you think about it, white-collar crime costs people their life savings, and it harms them—it sometimes even kills people—in other ways. In this article, the journalist wrote that a software company, Reckon, prepared some research. It's an accounting firm. This report analysed scam data from micro- and small businesses using scam statistics provided upon request by the National Anti-Scam Centre. They found that small businesses lost $17.3 million in 2023, with 2,490 cases reported. And the article says:

From January 1 to November 30, 2024, business scams cost Australian small businesses $7.9 million with 1,707 reports made according to Reckon's report.

I know that the former minister, the former assistant treasurer and member for Whitlam, who's now gone on to other things, did a lot of work in this regard. I applaud him for the efforts that he went to, to crack down on scams. I know he headed up a very well-attended forum in Wagga Wagga, where he warned people of the white-collar crime that exists, particularly in the area of small business and especially targeting older Australians. These scams have become much slicker, much more professional and much more believable. Anything that we can do to prevent this has to be seen to be a good thing.

This report from SmartCompany says:

For investment scams, small businesses saw a loss of more than $3.7 million, with 50 reports made, while false billing, which had 422 reports, recorded a loss of over $3.6 million.

Speaking with SmartCompany, Reckon's chief executive officer, Sam Allert, said:

… business scams cost Australia's small businesses millions each year—

of course, that's an understatement, because they absolutely do—

The financial and operational impact is often devastating, particularly for micro-businesses operating on tight margins.

That's what was reported. The quote that he gave was:

Scammers are becoming more sophisticated, using AI-driven phishing attacks and business email compromise scams that can be difficult to detect. This makes cybersecurity no longer optional but essential …

Small businesses must take a proactive approach by embedding cybersecurity into their daily operations. Implementing two-factor authentication, regularly updating software, and training staff to recognise scam tactics are crucial first steps.

But the difficulty, too, is that often you'll go onto a website that you need to access quickly—I know that this is the same for business—and you have to prove that you're a human. It's almost like the computers are taking over. And you have to look at each of the squares and mark the number of umbrellas or cars or bus signs or whatever the case might be to prove that you're not a bot and to prove that, in fact, you are a real human being. I know it's another form of ensuring that you are what you say you are and who you say you are, but—I tell you what—it is frustrating.

The article continues:

Allert added that many businesses also overlook the importance of cyber insurance, which can provide a safety net in the event of a breach.

And, of course, we've seen some spectacularly bad breaches in recent times with companies now, because they didn't take the measures, didn't take the steps, didn't take the precautions, having to pay up big time to customers who were quite innocently—or perhaps, in some cases, stupidly—separated from their money. Allert said:

Since email scams remain a common attack method, business owners must watch for red flags like unusual sender addresses, poor grammar, urgent requests, and emails impersonating trusted contacts.

Again, that's from the report. Allert then said:

Establishing verification protocols for payments and sensitive requests can help prevent costly mistakes.

Again, that's an understatement, but it's so true.

I want to commend the work that Bruce Billson has done as the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman in this particular area. I'm sorry that the government hasn't seen fit to increase his time with ASBFEO. I think it's a very good organisation; in fact, I know it's a very good organisation. I also commend him for the work that he is doing in the area of small business, building on the work he did as the best small-business minister this parliament has seen. I say that with all due respect to other small-business ministers, including me, who have actually occupied that role—and I know Anne Aly is doing it at the moment. But it's a critical role. It truly is.

But, to this bill, we are supporting the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It ensures key provisions operate as intended, taking in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and the Crimes Act from way back in 1914. It flows from the government's decision to reconstitute the Home Affairs portfolio from the federal election.

The decision to reconstitute the Home Affairs portfolio after the May election and the Prime Minister's recognition that there were issues with information sharing during the Dural caravan incident are an admission that the national security framework that he put in place by dismantling the Home Affairs portfolio failed, and it did so at a critical juncture. It did. That has to be said. The federal government and the AFP need to work in with states and the various state police forces to ensure that, when we have incidents such as the Dural caravan incident, we absolutely get the information, we absolutely share it as much as possible with the public as soon as possible and we are upfront about it. And I'm not quite sure, in that particular case, that everything happened that way. I have to say that what we've seen is, unfortunately, party and factional politics winning over common sense and public safety, and that is perhaps not the greatest outcome.

The second schedule amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to transfer the statutory function of the Communications Access Coordinator from the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department to the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs. That might sound like it's perfunctory, but it's not. It is a major change and is seen by the government to be a necessary amendment and update.

Schedule 3 amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to permit limited access to stored communications to allow agencies to undertake development and testing activities in situations where they otherwise would have been authorised to intercept the same communication if they were still passing over a telecommunications system. I want to point this out: we are served—and very well served—by some wonderful public servants in ASIO, in the AFP and in those surveillance organisations and departments. I've seen them at their best, and I know the member for New England has as well, in our capacities of being second in charge, each of us, of national security during times of government. We are well served, and we have to be. We need to be, because there are bad actors, both overseas governments and overseas individuals, who will do Australia harm. They would and they do. The number of times that these bad actors have been prevented from doing us more harm has only been through absolute diligence. These public servants, these surveillance agencies—AFP and ASIO and other people—are going out of their way to make sure that they undertake every stringent measure to make sure our public safety is No. 1, and I thank them for that.

Schedule 4 is for the technical issue with the operation of interception of international production orders in the T(IA) Act. Schedule 5 amends the Crimes Act, which dates back to the First World War, to clarify the threshold for authorising and varying controlled operations and the circumstances in which a participant is protected from criminal responsibility and indemnified against civil liability. They are necessary, perfunctory things that strengthen this particular legislation. The fifth schedule provides clarity around legal protection for officers involved in undercover operations targeted at taking down sexual abuse syndicates. As I said at the outset, clamping down on these people, identifying who they are and making sure that they are arrested either before they leave Australia or when they return to this country is of paramount importance, not only for the security of our nation but for the protection of those kids who they would seek to do harm to in other destinations, in other countries.

In the 2024-25 financial year, there were, according to the ACCCE Child Protection Triage Unit—and this is a sobering and devastating statistic—82,764 reports of online child sexual exploitation. That is nearly 83,000. That is gut wrenching. That is sickening. That is so disturbing. This equates to an average of 226 reports per day. To be honest, the penalties for this are probably nowhere near what they need to be. They should be strengthened, whether it's at the state or national level. These evildoers need to be weeded out and put behind bars—whatever it takes, to be honest.

These amendments in the overall legislation before the House ensure the law is fit for purpose going forward in addressing the most abhorrent online crimes where the persons under investigation are anonymised, including on the dark web and encrypted communications platforms, and that is good. That is absolutely encouraged. The coalition will always support sensible reforms which ensure that the men and women serving in intelligence agencies in Australia are given the best tools, the best support and the funding necessary. They do a wonderful job, and we commend them for it.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I concur with those remarks. I just want to add to the closing remarks of the member for Riverina that what we've seen is that obviously the set-up that we had in dealing with this was the correct one. It was changed by the incoming government, and it's had to be changed back.

But I want to concentrate on one thing, and that's paedophile rings and having to track these things down. It is an abhorrence that is more pronounced now. It has always been there, but with the capacity for people to go online, with the capacity for people to organise across national boundaries, we have to have the utmost forensic intelligence to track these monsters down. As we've seen in the notes, and I know the member for Riverina quoted it, there are about 226 new cases a day. For any person who's had children or has young children it's probably one of your greatest fears. It's your greatest fear all the time. When you're out in the community, you ask: 'Who is that person? What is that threat?' Unfortunately, you do have to be vigilant against it.

I have huge admiration for the police officers and for those who actually have to follow these nefarious, evil people through the dark web—through the onion routers and down into the dark web—without getting affected themselves. When they're trying to track these monsters down—and they are monsters; they are total and utter monsters—these officers have to be supervised so that any effect on them is also managed.

What we have here, in the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, is yet another mechanism that we hope will give greater efficacy to our continual pursuit of these people. What we see with the continued discovery of paedophiles is they're obviously still there, no matter what we do. There's still a burgeoning filth that is threatening what is probably the most sacred thing you can have, which is a child.

The other part of this that we have to be very aware of is the circumstance that Australia now sees itself in. There was a good article in the Australian today where Andrew Shearer talked about the issues that are now happening with the intrusions, the hacking into the lives of everyday Australians, predominantly by communist China. We also know in the past it's come from Russia, it's come from Iran, it's come from North Korea and it's probably come from other malevolent forces. This also is incredibly insidious. The capacity for people with ulterior purposes to gain access to personal details, to be able to manipulate those details, to put misinformation out into the public square—I'm not talking about misinformation about climate or something like that but misinformation that can actually change governments and change the direction of where things are going. These two need to be intercepted; these two need to be dealt with.

One of the things Mr Shearer said that I find quite alarming is:

Confidence in multinational institutions is weakening. The military balance is shifting against the West and deterrence is eroding. Our adversaries are exploiting our preference for restraint and de-escalation and leveraging coercion, cyber attacks, sabotage and disinformation to test us without triggering outright conflict.

Our nation's capacity to have oversight over telecommunications also segues into our nation's capacity to deal with what is already a prominent covert attack on Australia. This is already in train. It's already happening. It's not going to happen; it's happening right now. It's happening today. The previous coalition had to put forward a substantial amount of money—I think it was $10 billion—because we could see this, and even $10 billion is not enough. In conversations—because I'm not stupid; I knew we were going to lose government when we did—that I had with Labor Party people in the corridors, I remember saying just one thing: 'As you go into government, remember this: communist China'—I don't say 'the Chinese people'; the Chinese people are good people—'the totalitarian regime, is a danger. It's not any sort of association with genetics; it's associated with policy. It's associated with the process of unilateral control by one person. That's always a danger.' I said, 'Remember communist China is not a threat; communist China is already here. The issue is already here. It has already arrived, and how we deal with it is to be eternally vigilant.' What we hope we get with this is greater efficacy in that vigilance. If we were just to rest and to quietly think that this issue will somehow fade away, then the greatest threat and the greatest problem will be ours.

One of the processes that this can lead to if we do not have proper oversight is the total chaos that could be inflicted on our nation with things such as sleeper code. To give you an example, Deputy Speaker Freelander, I presume that you rate your wealth by numbers on a piece of paper. You don't have—maybe you do, but I doubt it—bars of gold in your roof; you don't have wads of cash stuck in your mattress. What you have is the reliance that the figures you see back what you're worth. For the title on your house, I bet you don't even have a piece of paper anymore; I'd presume it's all online. I'm going to pose a scenario. What would happen if people were clever enough in the online environment to make all those numbers disappear? You look at your bank account and there is no amount in it. You look at your title and there is no record of you owning a house. All your records have disappeared. If you had to go to a bank and prove you had the money you thought you had, how would you do that? If you could create a whole range of that across a society, imagine the chaos you'd create. Imagine the absolute chaos you'd be able to create in a nation. Imagine the view the nation would have of its own security. These are the sorts of things we have concerns about.

I'll give you another example, something that was put in the realms of conspiracy theories but now not so much. So many people today—this is a part of intermittent energy I have got no problems with—have solar panels on their roofs. However, one of the concerns we have now is if people are able to remotely control these and affect the inverters so that they don't switch off—they just heat—then they will catch on fire. That means, as we always hear Minister Bowen speak about how many of these solar panels are going on roofs, if they're coming from China and communist China has the capacity to turn off their safety requirements, then you have a huge problem stuck on every roof throughout Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide—across Australia. This could be complete and utter chaos. If you can make them catch on fire, I imagine that you can burn down the houses.

It's the same thing with electric cars coming in. If you have the capacity to switch them off, it's same thing. If you have the capacity to deal with the delay in the safety capacity of that car, to have its electronics overheat and catch on fire—if you can turn that off, you can create mass confusion in a nation. As they say, a war will start in the cyberworld, and it'll start in space. All of these other things that are envisaged—if you can turn off our reports in regard to weather, you also turn off the capacity for our airports to work and for our planes to work. In all of this, we are playing a massive game of catch-up.

As we have to as a trading country, we import products from sources that might have a malevolent interest in how they work with us, and we have to be absolutely vigilant in everything we do. We have to use every card that we've got to make sure we keep Australia safe. It's not just from Mr Shearer; we've also heard in the past from Mr Burgess and before that from Mr Pezzullo. They have all said the same thing. All these people who've been in the realm of understanding the threats to our nation have the same thing to say. It's no longer a conspiracy theory; it's no longer outlandish; it is in live play and happening now. I'm absolutely certain that those who are on the National Security Committee are fully aware of that. So any form of legislation we can bring in, such as the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill, that allows us the capacity for the better protection of Australia, the better understanding of anything—of getting any intel that we can as to what other people are up to in our nation—we must use.

In closing, I just want go to one thing that's in every town. It is the tobacco wars. In every town, just being flaunted in front of you, is the sale of illegal tobacco. It's the burning down of people's houses. If you dare to bring it up, if you try to address it—I was talking to people in a regional town not that long ago, and I said, 'Why doesn't somebody do something about this?' and they said: 'You'd have to be the bravest person in town. They'll burn your house down if you approach them.' I have real concerns. Obviously, we need to get inside what's happening in these criminal rings, but, at this point in time, we don't seem to have the desire, the capacity or the mechanism to touch them.

It's perverse that you can walk down the main street of a town and find maybe three or four shops illegally selling tobacco, and no-one cares about it, or they're unable to do anything about it. It also shows to other people walking down the street that the law is lost. There is no control over this. If they can do it in plain sight, how do we have confidence in other aspects of law enforcement? How do we believe that you have the capacity to deal with other issues, other criminal activities, if you can't fix something that's right in front of your nose?

If you look at the people serving in these tobacco shops, they look like they're opportunists. They don't look like geniuses, but they're obviously being organised. They're getting their product from somewhere. They're selling their product out in the street. The actual incidence of smoking is going up. The revenue that we were getting is falling through the floor, and our law enforcement is—I don't know—just completely unable to deal with it. I hope things such as this bill can assist in what is a much, much wider issue, and that is the lack of capacity Australia has to deal with some of the most pertinent issues, whether it's paedophilia, whether it's international pressures or whether it's domestic crime. I hope we can actually manage them.

Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I associate myself with the remarks of my colleague, the member for New England, on the insidious rise of the illegal tobacco trade at the moment. It is causing huge issues for regional Australia, particularly in my home state of Victoria, where that was brought home just this week, with the illegal ram raid on a local grocery store in Longwarry. They're good businesspeople; they care about their staff. They had a ransom note from one of these characters. They didn't pay the ransom. They did all of the right things. They went to the police. Yet, a couple of days later, they had a ram raid attack on their business, which is totally unacceptable. So we really need to deal very, very strongly with that in a number of ways.

The Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Crimes Act 1914 to make critical provisions operate as they are intended to. It also provides technical amendments flowing from the government's decision to reconstitute the Home Affairs portfolio after this year's federal election. Schedule 1 of the bill deals with the permitting of protected network activity and how warrants for intercepts of information are to be used, communicated and recorded to meet disclosure obligations. Schedule 2 amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to transfer the statutory function of the Communications Access Coordinator, the CAC, from the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department to the Department of Home Affairs.

We're at this juncture because the Labor government decided, after the federal election in 2022, that it would pull apart the Department of Home Affairs. This blatantly prioritised party political mechanics above the Australian national interest. We know that, following the 2025 election, the Albanese Labor government was dragged into putting the Home Affairs portfolio back together again in its original structure, which was put forward by the coalition. That included returning the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre to Home Affairs from the Attorney-General's portfolio. The coalition was open and upfront about its commitment to this structure before the election. The Labor Party was nowhere to be seen on getting its act together on this front. At the time, the Prime Minister was quoted in the Canberra Times as saying:

… the move came after challenges with information sharing …

'Challenges with information sharing' must be the understatement of the year in this case. The change was the third round of changes, by the way, that this government fiddled around with in three years as part of their machinery-of-government changes. This was, of course, after the events in January, when there was an initial discovery of a caravan full of explosives.

Schedule 3 will amend the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to permit limited access to stored communications and allow agencies to undertake development and testing activities in circumstances where they would, in other circumstances, be allowed to intercept the same communication if it were continuing to pass over a telecommunications system. The intention of these changes will be to firm up the existing framework and ensure it is able to keep pace with a continually developing and modern operating environment. Schedule 4 corrects a technical issue with the operation of the interception—

No, I'm not—of international production orders in the T(IA) Act that was preventing international production orders from being given to US based prescribed communications providers in certain circumstances. This is dealt with under an agreement between the government of Australia and the government of the United States of America on access to electronic data for the purpose of countering serious crime.

I go back to my remarks about the illegal tobacco trade in Australia. While official figures show that smoking rates are declining, wastewater reports from criminal intelligence agencies show that smoking as recorded in wastewater is actually at an eight-year high. Legal retailers of legal cigarettes are reporting, I think, 50 per cent down on the last 12 months and 30 per cent on the year before that. So we have a major problem with criminal gangs. That is absolutely relatable to some of the points in this bill.

What these amendments do is clarify that interception orders issued to Australian law enforcement and national security agencies may be used to obtain prospective content data from communications providers in a country with which Australia has a designated international agreement regardless of the type of technical method by which that prospective data is sent on.

I've had a bit to say about data management recently, particularly around issues pertaining to data sovereignty. I think it's really important that we have regard for the management and security of data kept here and abroad where it concerns sensitive consumer data, such as financial records or health records, or where we're dealing with the areas of national security and our Defence Force agencies.

The amendments clarify that interception orders issued to Australian law enforcement and national security agencies may be used to obtain prospective content data from communications providers in a country with which Australia has a designated international agreement regardless of the technical method by which that prospective data is sent to an agency.

Schedule 5 amends the Crimes Act 1914 to clarify the threshold for authorising and varying controlled operations and the circumstances in which a participant is protected from criminal responsibility and indemnified against civil liability. The anonymous nature of online crime means law enforcement may lack information to assess potential risks when deciding whether to authorise or vary a controlled operation. The amendments will clarify that the authorising officers must consider the direct and reasonably foreseeable consequences of controlled conduct when authorising or varying a controlled operation.

Schedule 5 also provides clarity around legal protections for officers involved in undercover operations targeted at taking down insidious sexual abuse syndicates. In the 2024-25 financial year, the ACCCE Child Protection Triage Unit received 82,764 reports of online child sexual exploitation. This equates to an average of 226 reports per day. The need for strong action against these predators has never been more acute. These amendments ensure the law is fit for purpose in addressing the most abhorrent online crimes where persons under investigation are anonymised, including on the dark web and encrypted communications platforms.

The changes in the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 provide essential clarifications to ensure that the agencies that keep our nation safe can continue to do so in an era of rapid technological development. The coalition will always support sensible reforms which ensure men and women serving in intelligence and law enforcement roles have the tools they need to take down criminals, no matter where they are hiding, and the coalition will be supporting this bill without amendment.

Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to contribute to the debate on the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I want to focus on regional telecommunications. Of course, the electorate of Grey represents 92.4 per cent of geographic South Australia, from the Nullarbor to the Eyre Peninsula, the Yorke Peninsula, the mid-north, the far north and, of course, the outback. So telecommunications are of enormous importance for the people of Grey.

Now, we've gone through a few generations of telecommunications. We used to have the copper network, and this was fax and dial-up, and that revolutionised regional communications. Times have changed, and the reliance on that network is no longer required, but of course we still have the universal service obligation on a service which is not being used. On our farm, for example, the tractor hit the copper cable. It's no longer needed, but we weren't using it in the first place.

Then we had the mobile network. It started off with, I assume, 1G and 2G. Then it went to 3G, 4G and 5G. As the Gs went up, the less distance the network could travel but the faster the transfer speeds were.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

We're about to get 6G!

Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I'm not sure if we're about to get 6G! But, in regional South Australia, of course—5G does not work in regional Australia, because the distances it can travel are quite short.

The other way that regional individuals communicate is through the satellite system. The NBN made satellites available to a lot of customers, but these are satellites that travel in the outer atmosphere, at great distances, so the speeds at which you could communicate were poor, and that didn't really revolutionise the connections in regional Australia. NBN fixed wireless did revolutionise regional telecommunications. These are towers that were put up in communities of between 100 and 1,000 people and had a range of about 14 kilometres. That certainly did revolutionise regional telecommunication. But I want to stress that there are plenty of communities in Grey that still do not have the NBN. It is 2025. The district council of Elliston on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula still does not have access to the NBN, so community members there either don't have connectivity or are using the old Telstra ADSL services. In 2025, that is not acceptable.

Now, in 2025, the private sector has got involved and we have LEOs, low-Earth-orbit satellites. Thanks to Elon Musk and Starlink, these have revolutionised regional connectivity. The technology in our iPhones today has the ability to talk with these LEOs, and that will be turned on throughout the coming months. That's why I thought it was a bit disingenuous when, at the last election, the Labor government came out with a policy to say, 'We will be supporting connectivity for all of Australia.' This was a nothing announcement because this was happening anyway They weren't doing anything to support the connectivity of LEOs. Of course, their announcement didn't talk about Elon Musk or Starlink at all, but that was the technology that they were leveraging.

What that also means is that providers like Telstra and Optus are in what I call a cost-out environment. They do not want to invest more towers into regional Australia, because they know the market share will get swallowed up by LEOs. That's what we're seeing particularly in my electorate of Grey. There continue to be no more mobile phone towers going up in Grey. I also argue that the Labor government is part of that. My predecessor, Rowan Ramsey, in his tenure got 56 mobile phone towers put up in the electorate of Grey. In the previous Labor term, not one new tower was put up. There were two promised, but still these two have not been built.

Last week were the Yorke Peninsula Field Days, and of course Telstra had a stand there. I talked about this fact with them, and they agreed. Another concern that we talked about was the degradation of services when 3G was switched off. As regional communities, we were promised that there would be no degradation of service when 3G was to be shut down. That's clearly not been the case. I drive thousands of kilometres every week. I know exactly where the dead spots are and can tell you that the service has been degraded.

With LEOs, there is a huge opportunity for Australia to get a hold of this market. We are launching low-Earth-orbit satellites into the atmosphere regularly. We have a retrieval site in the electorate of Grey because of our vast spaces of uninhabited land. It's perfect for retrieving satellites. We are currently launching satellites at Koonibba. That happens every week. We have a new satellite launch site at Whalers Way for sun-synchronous launches. These are satellites that go polar to polar, not around the equator. We are launching more each week, and there is a huge opportunity, a multibillion-dollar industry, that we need to take hold of here in Australia. Space is a regional industry. We are launching satellites from the regions, we are retrieving them from the regions and now we need to manufacture them in the regions as well.

The last thing I will talk about is the issue of power outages and their effect on telecommunications. Earlier in the year we had a power outage for about 20 hours on the Yorke Peninsula. The whole peninsula was out of power. The towers have batteries on them, but they only last for a couple of hours. By the time we got to 10 o'clock in the morning, no-one in Yorke Peninsula could communicate. That has impacts on emergency services. That has impacts on business, and it was a weekend, so business shut down for that day. ElectroNet at the time considered that not to be something they would pay out. If you were a butcher and you lost all of your produce, you didn't get paid out for that power outage. Some exciting developments that are happening include the ability for councils and other community members to get a generator and plug it into these mobile phone towers when there are power outages. We realise, with this all-in-one-basket, wind-and-solar approach to our energy market, our grid is becoming less and less stable. The degradation of our telecommunication network is getting worse as well. So we need to start thinking about these initiatives to support the telecommunications in the regions. I'll leave it there, but I'll finish by saying that we will be supporting this bill without amendment.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.