this talk is about joint work with ralf schmidt, and follows his talk on local newforms for $gsp(4)$ (in the representation theory seminar on tues, feb 1st). in this talk we will discuss a conjecture which describes a theory of siegel modular newforms of degree two with respect to the paramodular group. using our local theory, we will indicate how this conjecture follows from a corresponding conjecture in the language of automorphic representations. finally, we will discuss how the corresponding conjecture is implied by the conjectural detailed structure of the discrete spectrum of $gsp(4)$.