Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (17:29): 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.