Malcolm Turnbull introduces bill requiring data storage for two years, saying it is ‘critical’ to security agencies’ operations

The Abbott government will make “substantial” payments to Australian telcos and internet service providers under a new scheme requiring the companies to store data about their customers’ activities for two years.

But the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said he had no firm estimate of the cost of mandatory data retention, and argued the companies – not the government – were responsible for ensuring the safety of customer information.

Turnbull presented a bill to parliament on Thursday that would introduce “a statutory obligation for telecommunications service providers to retain for two years telecommunications data prescribed by regulations”, saying it was “critical” for police and security agencies.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner, Andrew Colvin, said access to the details known as metadata had application in a wide range of investigations, including pursuing illegal downloaders and file sharers.

The law will allow the storage of internet protocol (IP) addresses that were assigned to a customer and details of communications, such as the time, date, duration, sender or recipient, and phone numbers contacted.

In a bid to allay community concern over the storage of customer data, the government emphasised that the bill would not require a service provider to keep “the contents or substance of a communication”, and nor would it require companies to store users’ web-browsing history.

Turnbull said he expected “to make a substantial contribution” to the companies’ implementation and operational costs, but the government did “not have a final figure at this point”.

“We’re asking these companies to do things that they don’t have a business need to do and there is an expense,” he said. “There are ballpark figures being thrown around but they are at this stage not of sufficient accuracy for me to be citing at the moment.”

Labor has indicated it will consider its position, but the Greens warned the government to expect “a very serious campaign” against data retention. The Greens senator Scott Ludlam said the high costs were likely to be met through a combination of higher phone and internet bills and government taxes.

Ludlam said the government would “impose a surveillance tax on the entire Australian population and impose on industry an obligation that it doesn’t want, hasn’t sought, to track and store material on every device held by every man, woman and child in this country”.

The attorney general, George Brandis, said law enforcement agencies already could access metadata, but this depended on telecommunications providers storing the information of their own volition.

He said changing business practices and technology meant some metadata was no longer being stored, or would no longer be stored. Brandis argued a mandatory scheme was required to prevent “a very significant degradation of Australia’s counter-terrorism and general crime-fighting capabilities”.

The chief of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), Duncan Lewis, said access to metadata was critical to counter-terrorism, counter-espionage and foreign interference.

Colvin said metadata was important to national security operations but also “fundamental in most of the crimes, particularly serious and organised crimes, we investigate on a daily basis”.

These included child exploitation cases, murders, physical assault and sexual assault.

“It is the tool we use often to place people at the scene of a crime or remove them from suspicion. It is the tool we use to help us refine what further intrusive matters or powers we may need to use down the track.”

Asked whether metadata could be used to target illegal downloads, Colvin said: “Absolutely. Any interface, any connection somebody has over the internet – we need to be able to identify the parties to that connection – not the content, not what might be passing down the internet. Illegal downloads, piracy, cyber crimes, cyber security – [in] all these matters, our ability to investigate them is absolutely pinned to our ability to retrieve and use metadata.”

Turnbull said securing the data safely was “the responsibility of the telcos and of course they’re very alert to data security already and very sophisticated in that regard”. He indicated the government was preparing separate legislation to strengthen telecommunications security.

Liberal and National MPs were told about the bill at a joint Coalition parties meeting on Thursday morning. The legislation will be referred to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security for review. The timeframes for the inquiry are yet to be set.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Labor would carefully consider the legislation.

“We believe fundamentally in the promotion of national security,” Shorten said. “The security agencies say that they need metadata retained for two years. We balance against that the legitimate concerns for privacy. The good thing is that we have a parliamentary process and parliamentary committees which will review these matters. We’ll hear the evidence and calmly and rationally we’ll make sure we get the balance right.”

Ludlam said the Greens would stand up for the right to privacy, including the ability for journalists to talk to anonymous sources.

“At some point we have to draw a line. We are drawing the line at mandatory data retention,” Ludlam said. “We’ve been warning the government for months not to cross this line. They have refused to listen to the evidence provided by civil society groups, by the telecommunications industry and by voices from across the political spectrum.”