After a day of confused attempts to explain its new data retention policy and a stumbling interview by the attorney general, George Brandis, the government was meeting security and telecommunications experts on Thursday to sort out the policy detail.



The communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who was revealed by Guardian Australia to have reacted angrily to the lack of factual information about the plan in Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, said he and Brandis were now “on a journey” to determine the details of the metadata policy.

Despite numerous interviews by the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and Brandis on Tuesday attempting to explain what data would be covered by the proposed new mandatory retention regime, Turnbull said no final decisions had been made about what data telecommunications companies would have to retain.

“If … the outcome of this is no more than that … there will be a law, which states that telcos should retain the type of data that they are currently retaining anyway, then there is no additional cost, or somewhere between no cost and very little cost,” Turnbull told Bloomberg. “If on the other hand telcos are required to record, store and make accessible new classes of data in large volumes, then there obviously will be a significant cost, and then you’ve got the question as to who should bear that cost and in what proportions.

“I am sorry I can’t give you the outcome of the policy formation process, but we’re in an iterative process, we’re on a journey and until we get to the end of it it’s difficult to be much more specific than that.”

Many telecommunications companies were also waiting on a clearer explanation before commenting on the policy.

The Labor party said the saga had exposed Brandis as “a walking disaster”.

“We’ve seen … the prime minister and the attorney general not even able to agree from one day to the next on what they had said that they had agreed in principle about their mandatory data regime,” the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, told Sky. “Senator Brandis is a walking disaster … I think that Australians have to be concerned about an attorney general and a government that goes out proposing to make changes to our national security laws without apparently even being able to understand what it is that they’re putting forward.”

As Guardian Australia reported on Tuesday, the metadata plan was revealed to a newspaper before it was taken to cabinet, after an initial decision by cabinet’s national security committee.