David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

The situation is that AUSTRAC is not a law enforcer; it is an intelligence-gathering agency and a regulator. In the circumstances of having ASIO have the information, there is a lot of synergy between ASIO and ASIS. ASIS carries out a number of similar functions. It was always intended that there would be a capacity to provide the sort of intelligence gathered by AUSTRAC through its monitoring and anti-money-laundering capability to foreign governments. In some circumstances, it is the case that ASIS has a better capacity to provide that intelligence and to utilise that intelligence. We are simply expanding the capacity and capability to disseminate the information to the benefit of fighting money laundering.