Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told media bosses new government metadata laws are being overblown as an issue.
Mr Turnbull met media executives on Tuesday as the government seeks parliamentary support for laws to force telecommunications companies to keep two years of customer metadata.
Metadata is information about the time, origin and destination of emails and phone calls, but not the content.
Part of the bill deals with the disclosure or use of metadata for the purpose of determining the identity of a journalist's source.
A bipartisan report called for this section of the bill to be subject to a separate inquiry over three months.
The minister said his message to media companies was that law enforcement and security authorities already had access to such metadata and there were no exemptions for journalists.
"The only thing the data retention law is requiring is that types of metadata which are currently retained will be retained in the future for at least two years," Mr Turnbull told ABC radio on Wednesday.
"This whole metadata retention issue has been overblown by a lot of people - the changes are not as substantial as people make out."
Critics have described the bill as an attack on the ability of journalists and whistleblowers to expose corruption and misconduct in government.
The journalists union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, says it will have a "chilling effect" on reporting.
Mr Turnbull said the two-year retention period was vital for investigating crime and terrorism.
The government wants the regime legislated this month.
Attorney-General George Brandis has said the bill would reduce the number of agencies able to access metadata.
The government has also accepted the recommendations of the parliamentary committee that deal with journalists and their sources.
The Labor caucus has yet to consider the bill with all its proposed amendments.
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