Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks for going through that process. Hopefully, we can vote on the amendments separately because the Australian Greens do not have any objection to the technical corrections that the minister outlined but, as I raised in my second reading debate speech, we have questions about the power for ASIS to have access to AUSTRAC that is proposed in this legislation. So I have questions for the minister about how this has come to be in place. As I said in my second reading debate speech, ASIS was not mentioned at the time that we dealt with the first piece of anti-money-laundering legislation as an organisation to which it was intended to provide access to AUSTRAC.

My questions relate to when it became apparent that ASIS needed that access. There was no discussion at that time that ASIS needed that access. Now we have this proposal, but we have not had any explanation as to why there is this need for ASIS to have that access. Perhaps the minister is able to explain how this came about. Was it something that ASIS asked for? Was it something that the government identified?

As the minister also indicated—and as I mentioned in my second reading debate speech—ASIO and AFP already have access to AUSTRAC. I do not understand why, therefore, it is necessary for ASIS to have access to AUSTRAC as well. In all of the information that is available about ASIS—which is quite limited in the public realm—it is clearly indicated that their job is to be Australia’s overseas spy agency rather than spying on Australians. This has been the history of ASIS for a long time. The government’s reports on what the various different intelligence organisations do quite clearly indicate that ASIS is not a law enforcement organisation. With respect to the financing of terrorism, which we want to crack down on, the AFP is able to do that. So if the minister is able to indicate how it came to be that the government thought there was a need to add ASIS, that would be appreciated.