Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, as a former Victorian police officer I would like to pass on my best wishes to the Australian Federal Police officer who was stabbed in Endeavour Hills overnight and to the Victorian police officer who was also stabbed. I know that there will be a lot of concern among police officers right across the country arising from the events that have taken place.

In talking on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Unexplained Wealth and Other Measures) Bill 2014, I want to make it clear that I am speaking on the amendment. This all started back in 2009, when unexplained wealth was first introduced to the parliament. The incredible thing about organised crime is the amount of money taken away from the public and used by organised crime syndicates. It is estimated by the Australian Crime Commission at $15 billion per year. Most people are not aware of why we need unexplained wealth legislation. The simple reason is that the higher you go up the ladder of a criminal syndicate—and a good example is outlawed motor cycle gangs—you then get others to do what we call 'the dirty work'. They are the ones who do the drug deals and they bring the money back to the big guys. It is all about power and it is all about acquiring wealth. Once you have the money, you can use it to get other people to do your dirty work—for example, standing over the local real estate agent or car dealer to extort money from them. Organised crime syndicates also wash their money through legitimate businesses. They may, for example, buy a petrol station, while bikies like tattoo parlours. It is then very difficult for police to work out what are legitimate proceeds from the business and what is from organised crime.

In 2009, I participated in a bipartisan Australian parliamentary delegation to Canada, the United States, Italy, Austria, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In conjunction with the Australian Crime Commission, the delegation examined serious and organised crime to see what we could learn to mitigate similar organised crime here in Australia. As I said, it was a bipartisan committee. The now President of the Senate, Senator Parry, former Senator Steve Hutchins and Chris Hayes, who is the opposition whip, were all on that committee. The committee learnt a lot. The big thing that we learnt from all these authorities around the world was: go after the money. If you go after the money, you can bring down organised crime. As I said before, crime is all about creating wealth and creating power. In the world of criminals, power will not come without great wealth. If you take the money away, you take the power away. It is as simple as that.

As I said, in every country we visited they said, 'Go after the money'. One of the best examples of this was in Italy, where the anti-mafia police made it clear to us how they would use restraining orders. The situation that I recall was one where they had a person who owned a number of supermarkets. They had a turnover in the vicinity of 800 million euro, so he was an exceptionally wealthy man. The police determined that he was meeting up with mafia contacts, so they were able to use provisions similar to our unexplained wealth provisions on him, and they were able to seize all of his assets. I give a lot of credit to the Northern Territory government and police because they were the trailblazers in regard to bringing in unexplained wealth laws here in Australia. The Northern Territory had great success, in particular, in going after the outlaw motorcycle gangs.

The existing Proceeds of Crime Act does not go far enough in terms of unexplained wealth. When I first spoke about this issue in the House, I was not happy. I was not happy, because the legislation did not go far enough. Sadly, it went before the senators, and, as much as I love the senators, they did everything they could in their committee to water down the intention of the legislation. It has taken a number of years to get back to where we were. I am talking about a bipartisan effort here. When it comes to the Australian Crime Commission, both sides of that committee were determined to get the best outcome for police. The sad reality is that in the time this has taken we could have raised hundreds of millions more dollars to go back into local community groups to assist with crime prevention. The beautiful thing about this unexplained wealth legislation is that all of proceeds go back into the local community to help fight crime, whether it be through closed-circuit television cameras, supporting youth clubs, suicide prevention et cetera.

The bill contains eight amendments to the Proceed of Crime Act. To me, the most significant amendment is that seized proceeds can no longer be used to fund a defendant's legal case. When I lost my seat back in 2010, I went back to Victoria Police and I worked with Taskforce Echo, who are the guys who look at the bikies. They really tried to use the existing Commonwealth legislation, but they just could not. There were two areas which greatly concerned them, and one is definitely addressed in this bill—that the proceeds of crime could initially be used by the defendant to mount a legal defence. So you had the situation where proceeds—be they cash, property or whatever—had been seized by the police, yet the defendant could use those proceeds to fund their legal campaign. There was no incentive for legal counsel to say to the client, 'Listen, my advice is we are not going to win this. Let us determine what should be confiscated or seized by police.' Instead, they would say, 'No, we need to fight,' because they could say to the client, 'Don't worry about this, we are going to lose these assets anyway, so we'll keep fighting and fighting.'

This bill makes a number of good amendments, and I note that members from both sides have spoken about streamlining the affidavit requirements, allowing time limits for serving notices et cetera. The other issue of concern, which I am not completely sure has been addressed, is the ability for the defendant to get hold of certain documentation which may have been used by police in their proceedings. There maybe a situation where police are relying on confidential sources and those details are made available in their application to the court and subsequently provided to the defendant. That is an issue that I am greatly concerned about when people are providing information against serious and organised crime figures. It comes under the disclosure rules. I would like to be satisfied by police that this area has been addressed because, again, if it has not, in some ways that makes the legislation very hard to use, especially where you have informers. From my police force days, I can say that in most of the circumstances where people give information to police they are very concerned and they always want their identity to be protected. We need to ensure that it is.

In closing, I congratulate the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan. He has done a fantastic job, especially in recent days with what has happened around Melbourne and interstate. I congratulate both sides of this House, because everyone has been very focused. It has been a pleasure to be here when everyone is working together on a cause—that is, to protect Australians and make Australia a better place to live. It is great when we see that happen. Sometimes it can seem that it seldom happens—but it makes you want to be a member of parliament when everyone works together.

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