Mr PORTER (Pearce—Attorney-General) (14:30): I thank the member for his question. In July 2017 a terrorist plot to blow out of the sky an Etihad airliner whilst en route from Sydney to Abu Dhabi went undetected for four months because of the use of encrypted applications. In fact, in this case it was the encrypted messaging app Telegram. Australia's outstanding intelligence and police agencies are simply fighting a numbers game—and we can't be any more honest with the Australian people than to say that it is a numbers game—in their efforts to keep Australians safe. Those numbers are sobering and they speak for themselves: 15 terror plots have now been prevented; seven terror attacks have, sadly, been completed and, tragically, have seen the loss of multiple Australian lives. Our government has legislated 12 tranches of very significant changes to our national security legislation, and the parliament will be tasked this week with perhaps the most critical of all those changes in recent years—that is, the assistance and access bill. That is the only way that we can help our security agencies and police prevent terrorist attacks like the one that, tragically, we saw occur in Bourke Street in Victoria. The No. 1 priority of this government is keeping Australians safe, and dealing with the criminal use of encryption is the most urgent and important change that is required to keep Australians safe. Mr Watts: You did nothing for 18 months. Mr PORTER: As members opposite interject, we on this side of the House, like all members of the Australian public, listen to ASIO when they tell us that 95 per cent of the current targets that they are scoping for terrorism use encrypted applications. The commissioner of the AFP has said that we need these laws—in his words—to: … give police a fighting chance … in an era when the information that we gather is encrypted by default. We on this side of the House note that he doesn't say an advantage; he says 'a fighting chance'. When he uses the word 'police' he doesn't mean just federal police; he means state and federal police. We have now reached a sticking point with this critical legislation where members opposite want to deny this type of benefit to state police. We will talk about this overnight, but this side of the House will not deny these powers to state police and give them only to federal police. Our view is that the lives saved by state police are the same as the lives saved by federal police—that is, they are Australian lives. The Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police has said very clearly: We have been using the term going dark for a while. I think the reality is they have now gone dark. This legislation is urgent. (Time expired) Mr Brian Mitchell: Stop playing politics with it. Ms Henderson interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Lyons and the member for Corangamite will cease interjecting.