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

I will turn to that, Senator McKim, but first I will address the broader observation you made. I'm afraid, Senator McKim, once again you've completely misunderstood the nature of the bill. You seem to be intending to refer to section 315C of the bill. What section 315C does is create not a scheme of surveillance but a scheme of compliance. It provides a mechanism whereby the secretary of the Attorney-General's Department or his delegate may be satisfied that telecommunication service providers are compliant with their obligations under the bill. That is what section 315C is all about. Senator McKim, because you've so fundamentally misunderstood what this is about, I'm going to read it to you. Section 315C says:

(1) This section applies to a carrier, carriage service provider or carriage service intermediary if the Attorney-General's Secretary has reason to believe that the carrier, provider or intermediary has information or a document that is relevant to assessing compliance with the duty imposed by subsection 313(1A) or (2A).

The obligations, by the way, Senator McKim, imposed by subsections 313(1A) and 313(2A) are obligations upon carriage service providers. This isn't about the surveillance of citizens. It's about the surveillance of carriage service providers. We have often heard posed rhetorically the question: who will watch the watchers? This is a provision that ensures that there is oversight of the carriage service provider—the bearers of this information—in their compliance with their obligations under the legislation. That is not at all what you suggested it was about, so either you have not read it or, if you have, you have misunderstood it. And then the section goes on to set out the way in which that is to be done.

In relation to your second question: the report was tabled this morning because it was received in time to be tabled this morning. The tabling of the 2016-17 report is some time away because there is a large amount of information to be assessed in preparing the report. When that information is assessed, the report will be tabled in a timely manner.