Interestingly data collected by the Government through Census and Electoral registration is available to such entities as commercial debt collectors and betting agencies - check the Act yourself if you don't believe me - which then of course begs the question over exactly whether or not this particular data (does it really matter what extra information is going to be collected because we all agree it is going way to far already)is going to be offered to those same agencies and sold to reduce government debt?

MMMmm. Just a few other questions come to mind. Like -

If the private corporation that houses the data is offered a contra deal to offset the costs by selling data sets such as
what websites (and how often) the people in your street commonly visit, or what streamed services you and your neighbors are most often watching, or whether or not you prefer one type of petrol over another, or if you are a voter of one political party or another?? If that private corporation was to be a corporation that was allowed to be part of a media conglomerate with it's major shareholder who holds partisan political views? Would that be something that would be legislated against when data collection starts to collect every bit of personal data that is transmitted between us and every other corporate entity?

I wonder.

A point on metadata inaccuracies, the Government nor Opposition can elaborate on exactly what is or isn't 'metadata' and detail exactly what will or won't be 'retained for two years' because it is a technical fact all data transmitted between Tx/Rx is metadata.
Retention of all 'metadata' therefore is just the first necessary step in the process to making metadata storable and accessible for future uses. Mainly for future data-mining and data matching purposes for down stream users both Government and commercial operators.
The retention, categorization and cataloging for efficient indexing and archiving allowing ease of future access of large data sets, will allow the Government many commercial and legal opportunities to pursue. Such as national security,taxation and welfare fraud investigations, and provision of information to corporate and commercial operations for profit.
Governments or their pollsters, would also use it to gauge the response over a proposed policy announcement the same way commercial organisations currently data-mine user information for responses to consumer advertisements and 'sales campaigns'.
Collection of the 'metadata' will also allow it to on-sell that information for profit to debt collection agencies, credit reporting agencies, fine collections, court order servicing, monitoring of Court Orders, perhaps even to corporations wanting to influence the popular opinion and the outcome of an election......