Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the bill as presented and oppose the amendments. I will not go into the provisions of the bill as Senator Collins has already done so in her contribution to the debate. I acknowledge that this is a bill that was proposed by the previous government and referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, which handed down a final report on its inquiry. The government of the day accepted 15 of the committee's 18 recommendations, indicating that organised crime is motivated by the huge profits that can be made through illegal activity. The government said that it was:

… committed to ensuring that it has strong laws to target the criminal economy; not only removing the proceeds of crime, but also preventing its reinvestment into further criminal activity.

I note in passing that the Greens political party indicated their general support for that recommendation back in 2012, so I am somewhat surprised that they now have amendments.

I will not deal with the bill as such, as I said, because Senator Collins and also the minister in his second reading speech adequately dealt with it. I just want to briefly respond to the Greens' comments regarding their amendments. What the AFP and others are concerned about is that these proceeds of crime may, under the current law, be used to mount a legal case. As those of us who have any connection with the law know, you can run legal cases ad infinitum and use most of the wealth that was got from illegal activities in fighting cases.

The Greens said in their speech that it is difficult for people to prove that their house or car was legally obtained. I think when most Australians buy a house they go to the bank and get a mortgage. There is never much doubt about where the proceeds have come from. I accept that in a very high-profile allegation about a former Prime Minister there was some doubt about where the money came from to purchase a house in Melbourne but, that aside, most Australians can clearly indicate that they bought their house or their car through a loan from a bank. Those records are readily available. It is only criminals, who are often very well advised by top-flight accountants and lawyers, who can mix up the money so that it is sometimes difficult to follow the trail of where it has come from. Whilst I hear what the Greens are saying about their amendments, I can say that for 99.9 per cent of Australians there is not much trouble in showing where we all got our money from to buy our houses or cars.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee looked at this bill with some intensity. To a degree we were persuaded by the work of the joint committee on the same bill a couple of years previously, but we did seek submissions and we did conduct an inquiry.

I note that the Legal Aid Commission of Victoria was concerned, as are the Greens in their speech, that if people could not use the value of the assets in question to mount their legal defence, they might have to go to legal aid. I can understand the Victorian Legal Aid Commission being concerned about extra access to their very limited funds for these types of issues. As the Australian Federal Police pointed out, if the Legal Aid Commission does provide funds and it is found that the assets were legally obtained, then the assets stay with the person accused and that person then—with the benefit of those assets—can repay the Legal Aid Commission. In those instances, I do not think it is going to have a big impact on legal aid. Furthermore, the AFP said in evidence that they were :

… not expecting a huge volume of unexplained wealth cases.

And, further:

… if a person does need to resort to legal aid there are ways for them to do that and for the legal aid commission to recoup those costs.

That is, in the way I have just mentioned.

I do acknowledge the concerns of the Law Council of Australia, who did give evidence and did assist the committee with their work. I would point out—and perhaps I will not read it in full—page 29, clause 2.29 of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee's report, where the AFP explain that the current safeguards, which the Greens are saying are sufficient, were unlikely to 'operate as a concrete safeguard'. They go on in the passage quoted in the committee report to explain that:

The AFP added that the existing provisions, which provide for a person to access restrained assets for the purpose of legal expenses, have been found to be the 'type of provision [that] undermined the entire object of the act because ... people would rather spend their money on their lawyers than see the money going to be confiscated by law enforcement'.

In a lot of these issues, whilst they are matters for parliament to determine, clearly you have to take notice of the people at the cold face and the people who are there trying to protect Australians from crime—organised crime in particular—and the unexplained wealth that sometimes comes from organised criminal activities. The AFP and other law enforcement agencies obviously were the ones who approached the government of the day for the amendments to these bills to make it easier for them to fight crime and to protect all of us from the activities of organised crime.

I will not delay the Senate further. Suffice to say, for the reasons contained in the Senate committee's report and those enunciated by Senator Collins as well, I support the bill and oppose the amendments proposed by the Greens.