Metadata logging is a theoretical issue while the lack of vaccine supplies is a very real and immediate issue.
There are over 350,000 requests a year for metadata, about ~1000 a day. Any level of government can make a request, right down to local councils of towns with 2000 people. The oversight committee is comprised of three bureaucrats who have never found a single instance of the system being abused in years. In fact all the instances of misuse have been self-reported by agencies.
Metadata itself seems like an innocuous term but includes the location of every single mobile phone in the country. The enormous cost of all this is passed onto the consumer and the government doesn't subsidise reporting entities at all.
What exactly is "theoretical" about all that?
Sorry, who's the consumer in this? Can you explain more?
I remember it was after the shooting in Sydney by an Iranian refugee who had not only just been in custody but had arrive under the pretence that he was an Iranian spy seeking asylum. They had every reason to surveil the guy under normal laws but used it as an excuse to justify a drag net approach. It was obviously an Orwellian trick but no one cared.
Freedom should not be so whimsically thrown away, getting it back will be impossible through normal means.
Hell the premier implemented a curfew and said it was due to public health advice, the public health advisors denied it, then he said it was on the advice of the police, and they denied, and that was that. No further questions asked why we implemented a curfew for fun. In this environment it's positively quaint the idea that our cyber laws are the thin edge of the wedge.
I would leave, but like North Korea, it's against the law for citizens to leave the country.
Possibly, for the political class, metadata logging is THE issue of the moment.