Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Let us hope, Senator Brandis, that when you bring legislation to parliament you do not follow this outline. Before us today is the latest attempt from the government to patch up its money-laundering regime. But if you do, Senator Brandis, I will be here looking.

The bill makes a number of changes, the most significant of which I will quickly address. The substantive amendments to the bill extend the operation of the AML-CTF Act to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS. It effectively gives ASIS the same access to AUSTRAC information that ASIO has. In Labor’s view, this is a sensible amendment which will give Australia’s chief foreign intelligence agency the same access to information that Australia’s chief domestic intelligence agency has. There does not seem to Labor to be any reason not to extend the availability of AUSTRAC’s financial intelligence. Labor is in support of the general principle that our intelligence agencies should have access, provided civil liberties are adequately protected.

In this case, ASIS is governed by the Intelligence Services Act 2001, which provides a range of safeguards and oversight mechanisms for ASIS. There is also a raft of amendments to improve the technical operation of the act. For instance, the bill will clarify that signatories to a range of types of accounts, rather than simply the holder of the account—as provided for under the current legislation—fall under the aegis of the legislation. Similarly, exemptions from certain obligations under the act are extended to merchant terminals. There appears to be a drafting error in the act because the term ‘merchant terminal’ is not defined, although we can glean from the explanatory memorandum that it is intended to refer to EFTPOS and like services, but it is not defined. I ask the minister responsible—and I am sure the advisers will take note—whether, in his summing-up, he could indicate whether ‘merchant terminals’ was intentionally meant to be read on the plain words or whether an actual definition is required, and whether the government has taken into account the possible impact of technological changes in this area.

Before I conclude, I would like to address the government’s response to a range of recommendations made by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which examined what is now the principal AML-CTF Act. The government has agreed to a number of recommendations that were made by the committee and, in some instances, has gone further. Labor welcomes these improvements. Unfortunately, a range of recommendations were not adopted by the government but should have been.

I foreshadow that Labor will, again, be moving amendments in the Senate to improve the AML-CTF Act. Firstly, I turn to recommendation 4 in the committee report. This recommendation stated that clause 6(7) be deleted from the bill. Briefly, this is a matter that has obviously been aired before. That clause is a Henry VIII clause, a clause which allows regulations to alter legislation. Clause 6(7) would allow the government, by regulation, to expand the range of products and services to which the act applies. In effect, the government would be able to expand this piece of legislation to include any financial service it wished. Indeed, this is precisely the government’s argument for its retention. Labor does not agree and believes it is unacceptable.

If there is a need to alter the legislation then the bill should be brought before parliament and the legislation should be altered in that way. The government, in its response, indicated that these provisions were necessary and gave a commitment that it would not use the power to expand the legislation to include services that were intended to be dealt with in the second tranche of the legislation. But this is beside the point.

Whether or not the government intends to expand the operation of the legislation to include tranche 2 services, it still intends to retain the power to expand the legislation to any service it wishes by executive fiat and without adequate parliamentary oversight. Labor does not believe this is acceptable, and I foreshadow that I will be moving amendments in line with the committee’s recommendations.

The committee made the further recommendation, recommendation 5, that the CEO of AUSTRAC be given the power to deregister or refuse registration to an organisation which is seeking registration as a designated remittance service. The government rejected this with the reasoning that registration did not confer any status on designated remittance providers and existed solely to locate and identify remittance providers. Again, I believe this response from the government missed the point. Quite simply, if there is a repeat offender then the CEO of AUSTRAC, as a regulator, should have the power to refuse to allow that organisation to operate as a designated service provider or to deregister it. Again, I foreshadow that I will be moving amendments in line with that recommendation.

Recommendation 1 was a recommendation by me and my Labor colleagues on the committee which went to the oversight of AUSTRAC by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, or ACLEI. Currently, there is no oversight by ACLEI because the government claims it is not required at this stage. This is despite AUSTRAC’s new role as a regulator. Given that AUSTRAC, for the very first time, now holds powers both as a regulator and as a law enforcement intelligence collector, to leave it without effective oversight is not acceptable. Labor will be calling on the government to rethink its position on this recommendation, and I foreshadow that I will be moving amendments in the Senate to give ACLEI oversight of AUSTRAC.

To conclude, we are yet again correcting mistakes in important national security legislation. At some point you have to ask: when will the Howard government get the legislation right? The previous Minister for Justice and Customs liked to talk about security as a work in progress, yet in a large part much of the progress seems to be fixing up the government’s own mistakes. Have no doubt: sloppy legislation is a threat to national security. We have already had parliament recalled to specifically change the drafting of a single word. It is my hope that both the new Minister for Justice and Customs and the current Attorney-General will wake up to this government’s past failings and lift its performance.

Notwithstanding the outstanding problems, as I have said in my opening, Labor will support this bill as the amendments contained within it are appropriate and ones with which we agree. In addition, as I have foreshadowed, we will move amendments to improve both the bill and the act, but I reiterate Labor’s support and commend the bill to the Senate.