Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

The Abbott government has announced as part of the 2014-15 budget that it will increase the AUSTRAC supervisory levy, which is an annual charge on reporting entities to pay for the costs of AUSTRAC's regulation. AUSTRAC's purpose is to protect the integrity of the financial system. It also deals with countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism. It does this through being a regulator and a financial intelligence unit. The industry contribution will fund both the regulatory and financial intelligence unit functions of AUSTRAC.

I can indicate Labor will be supporting these bills, but I would also like to take this opportunity to point out an inconsistency with the comments Minister Keenan made in opposition. In opposition, Minister Keenan said:

It is not reasonable for the government to recoup the costs of running every government agency if that government agency is providing a public service rather than providing direct services to the people who are being asked to pay for them.

He went on to say:

AUSTRAC does provide a very valuable service but we believe that it is not reasonable to come back and to ask the 199 largest users to cover the costs of its running …

So we have a government who are going back on what they stated in opposition. They criticised the Labor government at the time for recovering these costs and they are now increasing the number of entities who will need to pay—199 entities were paying this levy; this bill increases that to 1,029 entities.

In government Labor was committed to fighting organised crime. Organised crime needs to be challenged at every opportunity. These bills will help in that cause and Labor will support them.