Tony Abbott has sought to put pressure on the Labor opposition to pass mandatory data retention laws swiftly, but conceded the cost and technical details were still not finalised.
The prime minister visited the Australian Federal Police (AFP) headquarters in Melbourne on Thursday to campaign for the proposal to store people’s phone and email records, three weeks before a bipartisan committee examining the legislation is due to complete its report.
“I hope it’s a unanimous report and then let’s get this legislation dealt with as quickly as we can,” he said during a media conference alongside the AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin.
“I believe that in the wake of the attack on the policemen here in Victoria, in the wake of the Martin Place siege, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, the public want protection, and this gives the public the protection they have a right to expect.”
Labor said it would not rush parliamentary scrutiny, while the Greens accused Abbott of invoking national security in a desperate attempt to save his embattled leadership.
“This is, I think, breathtakingly cynical action by the prime minister to salvage the dying days of his leadership by standing in front of an AFP banner to try to pretend that he can make the community safer,” the Greens senator Scott Ludlam said.
The government wants to require internet service providers (ISPs) and telcos to store customers’ phone records and communication activity such as email recipients for two years, arguing that access to such information is critical to law enforcement.
But the joint parliamentary committee on intelligence and security – which is due to report to parliament on 27 February – has been told government officials were yet to establish an accurate estimate of the full cost of implementing the scheme.
And Colvin said police were “working with industry very closely at the moment” on exactly which data would be included in the scheme.
The AFP chief said he did not want his officers to have to rely on luck when carrying out investigations – a reference to the current practice of companies storing customer data based on business needs rather than working to a national standard.
Abbott has told the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, the government wants parliamentary debate to begin in the lower house on 2 March and for the bill to pass both houses in mid-March.
After being briefed about metadata during his visit to AFP offices on Thursday, Abbott conducted a joint media conference and stressed the need for the “absolutely vital” legislation to pass the parliament “as quickly as is humanly possible”.
But he said the government was still working with the telecommunications sector on the cost of implementing the scheme – to which the government has offered to contribute.
“Even if the costs are in the order of a couple of hundred million, you’ve got to remember that this is a $40bn plus sector,” Abbott said. “So, the costs involved are comparatively modest and, obviously, we the government are prepared to work with the sector to ensure that we bear our fair share of the costs as well.”
Shorten said Labor had worked with the Coalition on national security issues, but would not serve the public interest “by rushing laws through the parliament” without adequate scrutiny.
“The great thing about our parliament which has served Australia’s interests well for over a century, a federation, is that you have parliamentary committees which examine draft legislation for all the pros and cons,” the opposition leader said.
“That process is underway. The government know this. The government have got members on the committee. The government agreed to this committee process. Just because the government is having its internal political upheavals and focused on themselves, is not a reason to throw our parliamentary system overboard.”
Ludlam said questions remained about the coverage and effectiveness of the proposed scheme, and it was not clear whether the costs would be known before the legislation was debated.
He said the prime minister was “effectively blackmailing” Labor and the crossbenchers to agree to a proposal that had not faced adequate scrutiny.
Ludlam drew a distinction between targeted surveillance and mass surveillance, noting that the gunmen involved in the Sydney siege and the Paris attacks had already been known to security authorities.
In a letter to Shorten, dated 22 January, Abbott called for continued bipartisanship and said police and security agencies had advised him “that metadata and related telecommunications information played an important role in the response to the Lindt Cafe siege and has been integral to the investigation following the recent terrorist attacks in France”.
