Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I want to add my voice very briefly to the call of the shadow minister for more haste in this area. I accept and respect the conundrum the minister and the government find themselves in. You have privacy weighted against security weighted against commercial needs and the competitive needs of the nation. Frankly, we need a less than perfect anti-money-laundering regime rather than none at all—and I recognise that we do have an anti-money-laundering regime, because that is what the financial transactions act is all about. But I am of the view that the need to limit the availability of finance for global crime or global terrorism—and sometimes they are one and the same thing, as the minister well knows—is greater than our need to make haste slowly. Global crime and global terrorism are an immediate threat, and I want to add my voice to urging the minister and his department to come forward with legislation as fast as possible, even if it does not meet the full requirements that have been put to us by the task force. It is better that, in this matter, we make rapid progress that might be less than perfect than make slow progress.