Labor backs down over encryption laws

Scott Morrison is claiming victory after Labor backed down on demand­s over tough new anti-terror encryption laws.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus says a compromise deal is in place. Picture: Alex Murray/AAP

Scott Morrison is claiming ­victory after forcing Bill Shorten to back down over Labor’s demand­s for a temporary version of the government’s tough new anti-terror encryption laws, aimed at targeting terrorists and pedophiles.

A deal was reached between the major partie­s yesterday after pressure from security agency chiefs, who called for the laws to be legislated before Christmas to prevent terror attacks.

Attorney-General Christian Porter said the legislation — which technology companies have campaigned against — would hand law-enforcement agencies a “fighting chance” to combat the high uptake of encrypte­d apps and devices by terrorists and organised crime networks.

“(This) gives them a fighting chance against the most serious offenders — terrorists, child-sex offenders, people who’ve commit­ted homicide in various Australian jurisdictions,” Mr Porte­r said.

The Prime Minister made the terror laws his priority this week, and claimed the deal as a major victor­y, which the government will move to pass through parliament by the end of the week.

Mr Porter said Labor had “moved very substantially” from a compromise offer, which include­d a “ridiculous” demand for state police to be excluded.

“At the beginning of this week, the situation that we faced was a proposal from the opposition for an interim bill that would have remove­d state police completely from a system designed to assist us with encryption,” he said.

“They would have also narrowe­d the range of offences to only two categories of offence and they were insisting on, in our observation, a very slow process of authorisation. These three things in our view would have made the bill very substantially ineffective.”

Late last week the government had said it wanted to push the bill through with only minor amendments.

However, Mr Porter said state anti-corruption commissions had been removed from the bill and would not have access to the new powers.

The government also agreed to have parliament’s intelligence committee review the laws in the first 12 months.

Labor’s legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus said the government had “trashed” the bipartisan intelligence committee process but conceded the compromise was important.

“Let me be clear — this bill is far from perfect and there are likely to be significant outstanding issues,’’ Mr Dreyfus said.

“But this compromise will deliver security and enforcement agencies the powers they say they need over the Christmas period.”

In an interview with The Australian yesterday ahead of the deal, John Howard accused the opposition of getting the “old Labor wobbles” on national-security issues.

The former prime minister said Labor’s approach to national-security measures could help the government be re-elected next year.

“We have absolutely unchallengeable credentials on national security and border protection, and in this debate about encryption you’re starting to see the old Labor wobbles on national security emerge,” Mr Howard said. “And you can always see when you get in a tight corner Labor will wobble on these sorts of issues.”

International and Australian technology businesses have campaigned against the bill. Atlassian head Mike Cannon-Brookes said on Twitter: “It’s dangerous and shouldn’t be passed.”

Technology businesses claimed the “technical capability notices”, which can be issued to companies under the bill, could undermine encryption by forcing companies to alter their apps, and argued it could expose their technology to hackers.

The head of the journalists union, Paul Murphy, called on the government to reconsider the laws.

“This bill would grant access to the communications data of journalists without any proper judicial oversight, and with no consideration of the need to protect public-interest reporting,” Mr Murphy said.