AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "There was no ill will or malice or bad intent by the officers involved who breached the Act. But simply it was a mistake." The journalist in question had not been informed their data had been accessed, Mr Colvin said, due to sensitivities around the ongoing investigation into the leak. The breach occurred "earlier this year" and was reported to the Ombudsman on Wednesday. Under the revised data retention regime, police are required to obtain a warrant from a judge to seek metadata from a journalist.

"The vulnerability is the investigator needs to understand that that's their requirement," Mr Colvin said on Friday. "On this occasion, the investigator didn't." The phone records in question were relevant to the investigation, Mr Colvin said, but "what was improper was that the right steps weren't taken to gain access to it". The breach is the first such incident that has come to light under the government's new metadata retention regime, which requires service providers to store their customers' data for two years. Acknowledging the policy was "controversial", Mr Colvin said Australians should nonetheless have "full confidence" in both the police and the policy. He conceded the AFP's internal procedures had not anticipated and prevented the error and therefore those practices would be subject to "significant changes".

Access to metadata would now be restricted to more senior officers, he said, and the number of officers who can approve access to metadata will be reduced. Training will also be bolstered. Asked if the unlawfully-obtained phone records would still be relied on to inform the actions of investigators, he acknowledged that once seen it could not be unseen. "Clearly they can't unsee it. They'll need to consider ... what weight they put on what they saw," Mr Colvin said. "But that material was accessed illegally, so it can have no bearing on the conduct of the investigation." He stressed the content of the journalist's phone calls were not accessed, just the call records. But Paul Murphy, chief executive of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, said that was not a mitigating factor. "It's another demonstration that the AFP do not understand the sensitivities here, the vital importance of protecting journalists' confidential sources," he said. "It's an absolute disgrace."

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, who lobbied for extra safeguards for journalists when the laws were formulated, said he was "furious" about the revelation and would seek further amendments to the law. "This is outrageous. There's been a flagrant breach of the law here," he said. "The safeguards have been completely trashed. This should chill the spine of every journalist in this country." Follow us on Facebook