People are missing the entire point. This was never just about Australia doing it. It's a proposal by Australia AS PART OF THE 5 EYES to bring this in. They're absolutely planning for this to roll out to all the 5 Eyes countries.
If we really want to quash this, we need to start making that clear to everyone in the UK, US, CA, NZ, and AU, that this effects ALL of us.
They're just using Australia to launch it for this exact reason, 95% of the population of the 5 Eyes will think they're not effected, not fight it, and it'll pass. Then good luck stopping their momentum.
It's my understanding that once Australia passes it there's no need for the other 5 Eyes countries to pass it, since they have agreements to be able to send data they've collected to other 5 Eyes countries. Which means that they could just send all of the data to Australia and have the encryption broken (as-a-Service you might say).
Unfortunately I was out of the country when this whole shitshow went down. I sent an email, but I'm going to go see my Federal MP in person tomorrow.
It works in other ways too - for example, the ADF can do things that the American military can't. Thus, the Americans come calling to their Australia partners in crime when they want some nefarious deed done on the battlefield... and Australians just roll over and let it happen - as long as there are avocado's to smash, Australians just don't care what their government is up to.
And even shit that the ADF is not allowed to do, they do anyway because there's almost no chance anyone will find out about it (especially with the new 10-year mandatory minimum punishments for leaking government information) and even if they did find out about it they can always hold an inquiry that provides weak recommendations that nobody ends up following. The whole fucking thing is a farce.
The UK already has a law that is somewhat related to this (and was probably an inspiration for this)[1], but the proposed Australian bill has a ridiculously low standard and no judicial oversight. Even if you think that breaking all encryption systems used in Australia would stop terrorism (and that it would be a fair deal) you should still argue that it needs judicial oversight to stop us from forming a police state.
I can't believe it's actually necessary to argue to our MPs that a bill proposing access to every encrypted message that has anything to do with Australia without any judicial oversight is precisely the sort of tool that a police state wants -- and that even if they agree with the crux of the bill (which they shouldn't) that the bill itself is fucking insane.
