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

I think the honourable senator, if I may say so, assumes too much, because the term 'metadata' is not a term of art; it is a term that means different things to different people. I can tell the honourable senator that, during the parliamentary inquiry to which I referred in my answer to his first supplementary question, a number of witnesses gave different definitions of what they understood to be metadata. I myself, on the basis of having been informed by the evidence of those several witnesses during the last parliament, thought that the Prime Minister's description of metadata as essentially billing details was a perfectly accurate, shorthand description of what is a contestable concept.