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

ASIO is an intelligence agency onshore within Australia and ASIS is an intelligence agency offshore, as you have described. It is not about onshore spies and offshore spies; it is simply about intelligence. The good senator would be aware that the movement of money nowadays is done electronically across sovereign borders. Where intelligence indicates that sums such as would trigger the thresholds as set out in the legislation are moved offshore into a sovereign nation, obviously the jurisdiction with respect to intelligence changes from ASIO onshore to ASIS offshore. In those circumstances, in order to have any value to Australia, we must have an agency offshore that can utilise that intelligence and use its good officers and rapport with sovereign nations such that they can endeavour to respond to the threat of money laundering in that sovereign country. That is the explanation as to why we have ASIS involved in the legislation. In a nutshell, the reason is that there is an awful lot of intelligence relating to money being moved offshore.