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c0lo writes:

The Guardian and others report that Australian legislation mandating data retention is one step closer, as the Federal Government's National Security Committee has quietly signed off on a bill due before the end of the year requiring telcos to retain users' metadata for two years.

CNET has a good review of the issue:

Chaired by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and made up of members of the Coalition including Attorney-General George Brandis and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, the NSC was established to address "major international security issues of strategic importance to Australia, border protection policy" and intelligence issues. Its decisions do not require the endorsement of the larger Cabinet.

Brandis has previously couched justifications of data retention in terms of "real and undiminished" national security risks and the need to keep legislation in step with the terrorist groups' "sophisticated" use of technology.

However, Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfuss (who declined to introduce a data retention scheme while in office as AG) said the push for access to metadata was not necessarily a response to current security concerns.

"This is a grotesque attack on every Australian's right to privacy and the legal principle of being treated as innocent until proven guilty, as a blanket Internet surveillance regime treats us all as suspects, sucking up a wealth of data that goes significantly beyond the pre-digital era definition of metadata," said Pirate Party President, Brendan Molloy. These sentiments were echoed by Chris Berg, policy director of the Institute of Public Affairs, who described the NSC's push to bring in a data retention scheme as "repressive and expensive".

Some of the ISP-es are also not happy. iiNet (famous for wininng a test case on copyright infringement in Australia) is educating their customers (and others) on what this means for them and also estimates the cost of the metadata retention to tens or hundreds millions dollars for the first two years.