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

I could give my speech from the second reading debate again if the minister wants to hear what the concerns of the Australian Greens are. I note that in the minister’s contribution to the second reading debate he did not address any of the issues that I raised. In my speech I said that the Greens do not have a concern. Obviously we do not—and I have said this many times before. Everyone wants to ensure that we do not have the financing of terrorism going on, but we want to ensure that any legislation that we bring in to implement that proposal is designed to deal with the financing of terrorism.

We have raised concerns before about the definition of terrorism that is used, because we think it is too broad. Our concern in relation to this legislation is something that I dealt with in the debate on the first round of the anti-money-laundering legislation, which was that it allows the banks to set up a system of risk management. It is their responsibility to make sure that they are not involved in the financing of terrorism. It outsources that responsibility to the banks. Then the banks are exempt from antidiscrimination legislation, which means that they can set up a system whereby anybody who has an unusual or ethnic sounding name can legitimately be caught up in the banks’ risk management assessment and the assumption can be made that they are financing terrorism.

I have raised examples of this before. One was the Iranian woman who was running a restaurant. The banks assumed, because she had regular payments going to Iran—to get dates for her restaurant that she runs here—that she was financing terrorism. The assumption was that she was financing terrorism. The other example that I raised was the record store in Melbourne which is called the Shining Path—the same name as the Peruvian organisation. The owner’s finances were shut down and frozen for months. It was only when he went to the media that he could get any action from the government to unfreeze those resources. Nobody is saying that we do not want to ensure that we stop the financing of terrorism, but we want to have laws that are designed specifically for that purpose. Our concern has been that these laws are not narrow enough. That is the general concern that I have had about both this piece of legislation and, most importantly, the earlier anti-money-laundering legislation.

My concern about this legislation, which I addressed in my speech in the second reading debate, was why ASIS should now have access to AUSTRAC. There are 30 other organisations that have access to AUSTRAC. That happened under the previous legislation. This piece of legislation has been billed by the government as being technical amendments. Apart from this issue, they are technical amendments, and the Greens are happy to support them. We think that the changes to do with liability are an improvement, but our question is: why does ASIS have access to AUSTRAC? This is a technical amendment bill. Were they forgotten? Was it intended that they would have access or has it been requested subsequently? Given the information that is available in the public realm and given the fact that—as you have said yourself, Minister—they are an organisation for spying overseas, not for spying on Australians, how does that responsibility link in with having access to the financial records of Australians? It is not obvious, and that is why I am asking the questions.

In answer to the question on IGIS, in these circumstances the government’s response is often that we can ensure that things are operating properly because of IGIS. I accept what the minister says about the capacity for IGIS to initiate an inquiry. If the minister were able to elaborate on that at all, that would be appreciated.

One of the other rationales that is often put up is that people can complain to IGIS. But if you do not know that you are being treated in this way then you are not able to complain. So this is my question: how can IGIS provide that genuine oversight if people cannot make complaints to them because they do not know? I am not saying that they should not be able to; I am questioning the government’s logic around saying that IGIS is a safeguard. How can IGIS be the safeguard if people do not know that they are the subject of intelligence organisations’ scrutiny and therefore able to make a complaint to IGIS? That is the way IGIS has been proposed: as a complaints forum. How can that operate if you do not know and therefore are unable to make a complaint?