Hello and welcome to another MLEX podcast. I'm Laurel Henning, one of the senior correspondents at

Emlex and I'm speaking to you from our offices in Sydney, Australia. This week, company names familiar to us all, Instagram, Facebook, Apple,

have drawn criticism from Australia's policymakers and regulators.

First, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims

took aim at Facebook's 2015 assurances

that to merge information contained on its network

with data owned by then takeover target WhatsApp would have been technically impossible.

The fault also lies with regulators, Sims said, who need to be more sceptical of what tech

companies suggest might be impossible when it comes to their data control.

The battle between Australia and US technology companies continued from there, this time coming from

the US, when smartphone maker Apple said in a submission to a parliamentary committee,

examining plan changes to laws governing encrypted communications, that the overhaul is

dangerously ambiguous.

On top of all this, last week, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, accused US tech companies of dodging tax,

misusing personal data and cosying up to dictators. Here to talk us through these latest developments

in what is becoming quite a bitter conflict

between Australian regulators and US tech giants, James Panicki, Emlex's Australasian

managing editor, joins me now from Melbourne.

Hi James.

Hello, Laurel.

So let's take a few steps back.

Tell me something about the Australian government's planned encryption bill.

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