Cybercrime bill passes lower house unchanged

The Greens have vowed to pursue changes to the cybercrime bill in the Senate after it passed the lower house unchanged.

Communications spokesman Scott Ludlam criticised the Federal Government and opposition for allowing it to pass without seemingly taking into account the findings of a joint select committee report handed down last week.

The report made 13 unanimous recommendations that were being considered by the Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

However, the report had stopped short of backing industry calls for the bill to be scrapped altogether.

The bill pushed telcos and ISPs to preserve "stored communications and telecommunications data", such as "computer data", email, and SMS messages, for use by law enforcement agencies in investigations.

It was couched by the Government as a necessary extension of surveillance powers to comply with the European Convention on Cybercrime.

Ludlam said his party looked "forward to working with both parties to fix this fundamentally flawed bill in the Senate".

"The cross-party committee identified a series of flaws in the bill, yet in the House of Representatives Labor and the Coalition alike seemed entirely untroubled by this," Ludlam said.

"We are greatly troubled by the fact that both the Labor Party and Coalition gave no indication in the House [of Representatives] that they believed any of the flaws needed fixing.

"On the contrary, they had nothing but praise for the bill," he said.