TLDR: The Australian government want communications companies to help them find weaknesses in encrypted devices, protocols and storage so that they can gain access to data. They can also ask for certain types of security or encryption to be turned off or modified.
The purpose is supposed to be for fighting possible terrorism.
This weakens the protections of encryption as the government is then incentivised to stockpile vulnerabilities that (like the US government's vulnerability list) could be leaked or stolen and then used for malicious purposes.
It also could be used by government agencies to break into encrypted data for much less important reasons than anti terror.
TLDR: The Australian government want communications companies to help them find weaknesses in encrypted devices, protocols and storage so that they can gain access to data. They can also ask for certain types of security or encryption to be turned off or modified.
The purpose is supposed to be for fighting possible terrorism.
This weakens the protections of encryption as the government is then incentivised to stockpile vulnerabilities that (like the US government's vulnerability list) could be leaked or stolen and then used for malicious purposes.
It also could be used by government agencies to break into encrypted data for much less important reasons than anti terror.