Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

These three amendments proposed by the opposition purport to limit the agencies that would have access to the stored communications interception regime. I think that what we have to look at is the sort of material that we are accessing here. We are not saying that the ACCC, ASIC or the Australian Taxation Office, or Customs for that matter, should be able to intercept communications. What we are saying is that they should be able to access documents which are stored electronically—documents which previously would have been found in a filing cabinet and been accessible by those agencies under different warrant regimes under the law.

So we are saying that, where you have a stored communication, it is much like a document. An email, for instance, really is a letter that has been transmitted electronically, and I think a lot of people fail to realise that these days. Much of Australia’s litigation today, and prosecutions, involve at some point along the line the introduction into evidence of an email. Many people, I think, treat it much as a telephone call rather than a letter. What we are saying is that, where today’s prosecutions involve that sort of stored communication, these agencies should have access to it. We do not believe that it is unduly expanding the interception regime, because we are not saying that they can intercept telephone calls.

I can give you some examples. The ACCC, in dealing with cartels and any offence which would relate to cartels—where more than three years imprisonment is involved—would need to have access to this sort of information if it were to found a prosecution. It is similar for ASIC with corporate prosecutions, and indeed there has been much publicity about those in recent years in Australia. The Customs Service, involved in very serious issues, would need to have access to this sort of stored communication. In the case of the Australian tax office, as evidenced by Operation Wickenby, which is currently under way—I will not go into the details, but it is public information that it involves alleged massive tax evasion—one can only imagine that the ATO would need to rely on the evidence of stored communications.

In many investigations today, you see the seizure of information held on computers as forming the basis for prosecutions of serious offences. That is why it is essential that these agencies be allowed to have access to stored communications. Certainly, interim arrangements that we have had in place have allowed these agencies that access—and we are not saying that, just because it has been in place, we should necessarily continue it. The reason is that the environment is changing and, instead of seizing documents in a filing cabinet, you are now seizing information which is stored electronically. This ability has to be extended to agencies such as the ACCC, the ATO, ASIC and others, because they are very much involved in law enforcement and they need to have the power to intercept stored communications.

I appreciate the committee’s comments in relation to this and I have looked at those comments. The Attorney has said that, of course, we will continue to consider the committee’s recommendations, but we feel that at this point we have to maintain the current interim regime, for the reasons I have mentioned.