Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)

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

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allocated for statements on this report has expired. Does the member for Werriwa wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a later occasion?

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.