‘Senator for the Internet’ Scott Ludlam says metadata legislation is being rushed.
West Australian Senator Scott Ludlam believes Prime Minister Tony Abbott is pushing hard for metadata collection in order to keep his job.
Lukas Coch for BuzzFeed / AAP
The Greens Senator told BuzzFeed News that Mr Abbott is attempting to rush through laws that would impose a $400 million cost to the local telecommunications industry and see all Australian citizens' metadata collected and stored for up to two years.
Senator Ludlam suggested Mr Abbott wants to pass the laws after struggling to push government legislation through the divided Senate in recent months.
"It looks as though he's practically staking his prime ministership on it, that he wants this legislated by the end of March. This has been in the works since 2008: so what's the rush?"
Mr Abbott, whose leadership has come under attack from his own party in recent weeks, today said that the proposal would cost the Australian telecommunications industry about $400 million.
Channel Nine
Standing beside anti-child abuse advocates at a press conference on the Gold Coast, Mr Abbott stressed that security agencies needed metadata to catch paedophiles. It represented a shift away from anti-terrorism justifications that he had been used in recent weeks.
"So much of this kind of activity is of this kind of activity is being conducted online and that why we need to keep this data," he said.
Senator Ludlam, seen by Australia's online community as the de-facto "Senator for the Internet", sat down with BuzzFeed News last week to explain his serious concerns about metadata collection being proposed by the government.
He has become the main voice of dissent on the issue.
