Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I also welcome the opportunity to comment on the tabling of this report into the legislative arrangements to outlaw serious and organised crime groups by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission, of which I am a member. Like the member for Hayes, I also thank the secretariat, ably led by Dr Jacqui Dewar and her team Nina, Robyn and Danielle, for the hard work that they have done. It is very easy for us as members and senators to turn up to meetings and ask questions. The real hard work goes on behind the scenes.

This committee examined the effectiveness of legislative efforts to dismantle and disrupt serious and organised crime groups and the associations within those groups. We received 24 submissions and held nine public hearings. Seven recommendations were made. The Liberal members of the committee made additional comments, which I commend all interested in the subject to, and they are to be found at the rear of the report.

In looking at organised crime, I as a new member to the committee felt that I had a window on an area of activity—illegal of course—in Australia that most people would not be familiar with. It is certainly the case that we are all familiar with the arguments against confiscating the proceeds of crime, preventing the association of known criminals and all of the civil libertarian—if I can call them that—arguments that are put forward by those on that side of the argument. But when you see the other side and you look into the rather deep, dark world of criminal activity and what goes on there you certainly feel, as I did, that we as parliaments and legislators need to take very strong measures against criminals and their networks. We need to identify what actually is organised crime in order to tackle it properly. The committee found that serious and organised crime means the following are in existence: substantial planning, sophisticated methods and techniques used, a crime committed in conjunction with other offences and a crime is serious within the meaning of the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Recommendation 1 is about improving the data we collect on criminal groups and their memberships in order to develop an accurate national picture of what organised crime is apart from the technical definition, because only then will we be able to make the arguments to those who provide the resources—and they will not be inconsiderable—in the fight against organised crime. We as separate jurisdictions within this country must overcome the natural difficulties of sharing the data that state policing services and state crime commissions collect. Recommendation 1 was very important from that point of view.

One of the things that struck me was the changing nature of criminal activity. As the circumstances in which organised crime operate become more and more complex, legislative tools will need to evolve rapidly in order to match and meet the needs of that criminal environment. Groups are no longer there because of their geography, their ethnicity, their demographics or because they have a commonly held interest. They come together and disband as the opportunities arise in what is increasingly a purely professional and business way. Where there is a criminal opportunity to make serious money, they say, ‘Let’s come together from disparate areas of previous involvement in crimes, work on this particular opportunity and then disband again.’ That makes them very difficult for law enforcement to track. If the groups operate in this increasingly fluid network, we need flexibility and innovation in our legislative framework and in our law enforcement. Increasingly, organised crime networks are making better links, if I can put it that way, with the legitimate world and legitimate sources of revenue. They have respectable legal fronts operating in terms of their tax, business structure and their exchange of finance. (Time expired)

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