CANBERRA — Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has rejected calls from political opponents for an inquiry into the country’s spy agencies, following reports that Canberra offered its close allies access to communications data gathered on its own citizens under a high-tech eavesdropping programme.

Documents released by former United States National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian newspaper online yesterday showed Australia’s NSA equivalent — the Australian Signals Directorate — offered to share raw data during talks with four allies on the scope of intelligence cooperation.

Australia’s influential Greens party, which holds the balance of power in the Upper House, said the reports showed that the country’s spies were potentially in breach of domestic laws meant to guarantee the privacy of ordinary citizens. The party has called for an inquiry into the oversight of the country’s intelligence services and membership of the so-called Five Eyes alliance with the US, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.

Mr Abbott, whose conservative government was not in power at the time, said there was no evidence that Australia’s civilian and military spy agencies had been overzealous in the collection and sharing of so-called “metadata”, listing telephone, Internet and email use by citizens.

“I want the arms — the long, strong arms of Australia — to be zealous in protecting our national interest and protecting our citizens. I think we do have very strong safeguards in place and that will always be the case,” he told reporters.

The Snowden revelations have prompted a global outcry over the scope and oversight of NSA activities, including monitoring taps placed on foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They also showed that Australia’s spy agencies in 2009 tried to hack into the cellphone of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and targeted his wife and members of his inner circle. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has outlined a six-step process of diplomatic repair between the two countries, which could take up to a year.

The alleged spying issue is a headache for Mr Abbott at a time when his three-month conservative government is defending broken election promises on school funding and battling to overcome opposition in the Upper House to the repeal of an unpopular carbon tax.

The latest Snowden leak said Australia’s signals directorate — capable of siphoning bulk communications traffic from satellites and undersea fibre-optic cables — offered metadata at a meeting with its allies at a two-day meeting hosted by the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at its Cheltenham headquarters in April, 2008.

Australia offered fewer reservations on data sharing than Canada, the Guardian said. The report quoted an unnamed GCHQ note-taker who said Canberra had offered bulk, unfiltered metadata, with caveats only on so-called “pattern of life” assessments that collate information on the daily communications of Australians.

Spy agencies argue that metadata offers vital information to help counter terrorism and transnational crime operations, though Australian law prohibits interception of domestic communications without a specific warrant. Laws governing the signals directorate allow it only to gather such information offshore. The Department of Defence declined to comment on its intelligence gathering capabilities.

Mr Abbott said the information gathered did not include the content of phone calls or emails within Australia, and was subject to stringent legal oversight.

“There’s nothing that I am privately aware of, to suggest that any Australian law has been broken,” he said. Dow Jones