The government knows data retention was never going to be a vote winner. Labor, meanwhile, is scared of being painted as soft on national security.

The result is that plans to force telcos to keep people's phone and internet metadata for at least two years haven't been explained as thoroughly as they probably should, with the consequence that many Australians remain confused and vulnerable to excessive claims that their privacy is being trampled upon.

That is a shame, because a data retention regime of two years, with proper precautions around how that data it is accessed by authorities, is reasonable, proportionate and necessary.

It is absurd to allow a situation in which police might need to establish whether one criminal suspect phoned or emailed another suspect last year only to find the telco has already wiped those records. That is what would increasingly happen as telcos charge people for data rather than for the individual communications they make.