Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission, I present the committee’s report, incorporating additional comments, on the inquiry into the legislative arrangements to outlaw serious and organised crime groups, together with evidence received by the committee.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

Before I go into a little detail regarding this report, I want to start by expressing my sincere appreciation to all those people who contributed so much to the conduct of this particular inquiry. I would like to thank my colleagues on the committee itself, particularly the chair, Senator Hutchins, and the many law enforcement experts, lawyers and other interested parties who contributed to the inquiry, whether by written or personal submissions to the inquiry. A very special thankyou needs to go to the committee secretariat, headed up by Dr Jacqueline Dewar and ably supported by Robyn Clough, Nina Boughey and Danielle Oldfield. I thank them for all the assistance that they provided and the most professional way in which they discharged their duties on behalf of our committee.

By way of background, in 2007 the committee found that Australia faced an increasing threat from serious and organised crime and transnational crime and that, while there were a number of legislative and other arrangements in place, these alone may not have been effective in combating the contemporary threats being posed. In fact, it is estimated that the cost to the Australian economy through criminal enterprise is in the order of $15 billion each year. Given the substantial harm to our society and our economic activity, in March 2008 the committee initiated an inquiry into the legislative arrangements to outlaw serious and organised crime groups. To ensure that our framework of disrupting and dismantling serious and organised crime is as effective as possible, it was noted it would be of some value to examine the effectiveness of approaches taken in other international jurisdictions. In April 2009 I was lucky enough to be part of a delegation that visited North America, Europe and the United Kingdom to examine international trends in serious and organised crime and the legislative and administrative approaches adopted by a number of those jurisdictions in tackling both domestic and transnational crime.

The delegation reported to the House on 25 June and identified a number of areas of concern but also a range of approaches which had been effective in addressing serious and organised crime. These fell into five categories: the importance of following the money trail, the need for information sharing and greater cooperation amongst law enforcement agencies, the benefits of developing measures to prevent organised crime rather than simply reacting to it, the critical role that political will plays in combating serious and organised crime, and the need for governments to take a holistic approach in tackling organised crime through a whole package of legislative and administrative measures. It became crystal clear in visiting a number of jurisdictions and through the evidence given to the committee that law enforcement strategies which target the business model, financial assets and material assets of organised crime groups were far more critical in disrupting criminal enterprise. Many jurisdictions found that there was a fundamental shift in the way law enforcement tackles organised crime with the focus being on the money trail. Raffaele Grassi of the Italian National Police best articulated this approach when he told the committee that criminal ‘members are prepared to spend time in prison, but to take their assets is to really harm these individuals’.

It should be known that a number of jurisdictions, including the UK, Italy and, here in Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory already have adopted legislative measures that reverse the onus of proof, enabling authorities to restrain assets that appear to be additional to an individual’s legitimate income and require the individual to demonstrate that those assets were obtained by legal means.

The security of the nation is the highest priority of this government. The Prime Minister, in his nation security statement in December last year, assured Australia that we would act on that. Indeed, in June of this year the Attorney-General introduced into the House the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Serious and Organised Crime) Bill, which delivers on that assurance. The committee supports and recommends that the unexplained wealth provisions of the bill be enacted. (Time expired)

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