Michael Bradley summarises the situation on meta-data collection very well in his article for ABC’s The Drum.

[…] nobody has put up a rationally argued case for what is in reality a mass government surveillance program. […]

You’d think that, before we decided as a society to allow our privacy to be serially infringed in this most intimate and comprehensive way, we’d want to be absolutely sure it was necessary. We didn’t get that chance, and our Government and Opposition have let us down in the worst way in their joint unseemly haste to look strong. This is one of those moments upon which we will look back and wonder, how on earth…