…sorry, at Centrelink? So the unemployed are now also terrorists? That seems a long bow to draw, even for Abbott. But let us continue! "We are a free and fair nation. But that doesn't mean we should let bad people play us for mugs, and all too often they have: Well, that's going to stop." Similarly the treasurer has confirmed that he also feels he's been a bit too soft and that the next budget will be essentially the same as the last one. You know, the one that still hasn't been passed? That one. And it's a solid strategy: after all, as we all know, if punching yourself in the gonads hurts for some reason, the issue probably is that you didn't punch them hard enough, right? That being said, Abbott's ploy makes good political sense: in the face of terrible polling, rising unemployment, slowing growth, parliamentary incompetence and internal discord, the only card Abbott can play is the one marked "I'm keeping you safe from the scary things!"

The message ends with an assurance that part of that safety hinges on the successful passage of the government's still-unpassed suite of laws forcing internet service providers to retain information on what their users do online - which, as attorney-general George Brandis has made clear, is an unfortunate but necessary step for our national security. And to be fair, he's half right: it's definitely unfortunate. Luckily, it's also definitely not necessary! What's a metadata, George? You may be curious as to how data retention can keep you safe from terrorism. Short answer: it doesn't.

That's not lefty hand-wringing over privacy and the presumption of innocence either, great as both those things are. It's a straight up fact. See, the US has had mandatory data retention as part of the post-9/11 Patriot Act, and the FBI have concluded that it has been important in exactly one terrorism-related case in which San Diego taxi driver Basaaly Moalin was found to have donated $8,500 to al-Shabaab, a Somalian group affiliated with al-Qaeda. So yes, definitely illegal, but that prosecution wasn't exactly a triumph of national security. In Germany, where they also have had mandatory data retention laws, a parliamentary working group found it increased their crime clearance rate by 0.006 per cent - or, to put it another way, by a statistical error - and the laws were declared unconstituional in any case. And the successful terrorist attacks that are often cited - like Man Haron Monis in Sydney, the Boston Marathon bombers, the muder of British Serviceman Lee Rigby in the UK - didn't happen because of a lack of metadata. All of the perpetrators were well known to the police, who had decided not to continue monitoring them. And that's not going to magically change when they have metadata to sift through.

Law enforcement resources are finite and mistakes can be made - but it's got nothing to do with data retention and everything to do with under-resourced departments trying to the make the best decisions they can. Also, maybe it's best to know what the law actually is before trying to pass it The other problem is that the government hasn't actually defined what data they think should be retained, and George Brandis has shown that he a) has no idea what "metadata" is, and b) also can't explain who would be required to retain what. For example, it would appear that users of web-based email services like Google's Gmail service won't have their metadata recorded, since Google's not an Australian company - but users of local services will. Sounds fair! Furthermore, it would appear that Australian companies will have to carry the cost of implementing this programme - costs which, as Anna Harmer from the Attorney General's department admitted to the Senate Committee of the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act, the government won't reveal until after the legislation is passed, not least because they're not yet sure what the programme will actually, y'know, be.

As Greens senator Scott Ludlum pointed out last month, this looks like the government is deliberately making life harder for Australian companies. "So if my email account is an @iinet.net.au address it will be within scope, and if my email is an @gmail.com it'll be out of scope?" he asked Harmer. "All I need to do to avoid mandatory data retention is just to take a webmail service… Are you trying to drive people away from Australian service providers?" So, to recap: the government is currently attempting to pass laws to retain information they have not defined, by organisations they cannot confirm, at a price they won't reveal, in the pursuit of a result that the international experience has demonstrated it cannot achieve. Sounds fine! Assuming, of course, that our future cyber terrorists are even less computer literate than the Attorney-General. The cocktail hour: Seriously, George, what's a metadata?