Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (18:20): It is said that a fool and their money are easily separated. But in this day and age, very intelligent people and their money can also be very quickly and easily separated, and this Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026 is important. I know and respect and acknowledge the input the member for Bruce has had into this particular legislation in the House of Representatives, and I acknowledge previous speakers.

The coalition is supportive. Although, that said, we're not going to give the government a blank cheque for this particular bill. But if it enables the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, AUSTRAC, with the powers it needs to track, weed out and crack down upon nefarious actors and characters in this space, then all well and good.

I know that scams are so prevalent, and the previous speaker made reference to the burgeoning number of crypto automatic teller machines. Cryptocurrency ATMs in the Riverina number four, as I understand, with three in Wagga Wagga and one in Junee. What we need to absolutely do as a parliament is try to keep pace.

In fact, we should try and get ahead of the criminal gangs and the criminal intent. But it's not always easy, particularly with technology moving as fast as it does in these times. We live in interesting and difficult times.

I know that in Victoria there is a car being stolen every 43 minutes in Melbourne, and 79 per cent of those cars are never recovered. They are being used, I'm told, as a form of currency, as a form of ill-gotten gains, by groups that then fund their activities. And we don't need to be reminded, probably again, of what is happening in the space of legal tobacco outlets and illegal ones where every night, it seems, we're seeing Molotov cocktails thrown at and firebombings of these establishments, particularly in the Victorian capital.

The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026 covers three very broad changes to Australia's existing anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing regime. I acknowledge the presence in the chamber of the member for Wide Bay, a former police officer, a distinguished one. He is somebody for whom this would also be a very worrying trend, because I know that the member fought the good fight against criminals and criminal gangs and criminal activities in Queensland.

But our police forces are being overwhelmed and overrun by the technology being used and by the fact that courts don't always, I believe, uphold the arrests that are made. The work that goes into those arrests and bringing people before the courts on allegations sometimes, you would argue, on the face of it, should be sustained. I appreciate the work that our state police forces do throughout the country.

This bill creates a new power for the chief executive officer of AUSTRAC to restrict or indeed even prohibit high-risk financial mechanisms. It expands the statutory definition of 'terrorism financing' and introduces quite a number of technical changes that are aimed at improving the overall operation of the AML/CTF framework. If ever we needed to thwart terrorism financing, it is right now because not just in Australia but right throughout the world we are seeing the rise of terrorism activities that are worrying to a peace-loving democracy such as ours.

The Bondi massacre showed us that Australians are living in a very heightened threat environment, and this legislation is very much a direct measure to disrupt terrorism financing, to stop criminal cash flows and to make Australia not only financially safer but, indeed, safer. Crypto ATMs are, it is said, a scammer's best friend. We, as a coalition, are endeavouring to make sure that our security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies all have the flexibility to deal with a really fast-moving, changing threat landscape.

It's not easy. I acknowledge the work that the government is doing as well. I acknowledge the experience that the member for Bruce brings to this task.

I've worked with him on committees and I know that, when he puts his mind to something, it's always reasonably diligent. I respect his work in this regard. I say that in a very bipartisan way.

Locally—and, of course, all politics is local—in February this year, Murrumbidgee police warned of crypto fraud after an intended victim avoided a $20,000 loss. The intended victim almost lost that amount from their bank account. The local inspector, Glenn Smith, said the incident occurred back at the end of January.

The victim was contacted by an unknown user on the messaging platform WhatsApp, which is encrypted. The targeted person was asked to provide their bank details so they could receive cryptocurrency to which they were entitled. The targeted victim then provided the unknown user with their bank account details, which is always a mistake, and a copy of their driver's licence.

It wasn't too many days later that the intended victim was contacted by their bank and informed that an unknown person was attempting to make a $20,000 transaction through their account. The intended victim told the bank person who contacted them that they did not intend to authorise this transaction, and no money was withdrawn from their account. That person was very lucky because $20,000 could've disappeared as quickly as I just snapped my fingers.

It's not just in capital cities that this is happening. This happened in and around the Riverina. It is affecting our regions, it is affecting our vulnerable, and we must as a parliament crack down on financial crime.

We often hear and read dreadful stories about crime and violence, but white-collar crime has every much of an affect on people's lives, on people's mental health, on people's physical state and certainly on people's financial security as any other piece of criminal activity. We need to be aware of that. Legislation needs to try to get ahead of the explosion of cryptocurrency fraud and the people who would very quickly and adroitly separate people and their money.

Money is too hard to earn to be giving it away to criminals, to thugs, to gangs that are then going to use it for—who knows what?—terrorism or any other activity. Concerns have arisen as bitcoin portals pop up at petrol stations and convenience stores across the country. AUSTRAC CEO, Brendan Thomas, was quoted recently as saying: Crypto ATMs provide a fast, irreversible way for victims to send money to scammers … They're easy to locate, often operating 24/7, and designed for quick cash transactions with no human intervention, making them highly attractive to criminals.

There are any number of long and sad stories that have been told and have been well enunciated by people who have been separated from their money, particularly older Australians. Often, as my late father, Lance, always used to tell me, if there's an offer too good to refuse, then usually you should refuse it. And these get-rich-quick schemes honestly lead a lot of otherwise sensible people down the wrong path, particularly people who may not have the superannuation or may not have the retirement savings.

They may be in an older stage of their life and looking to invest their nest egg that they've worked hard to achieve, and through ill advice and through some of these people who advertise on social media platforms and the like, they see this cryptocurrency, they wonder what it's about and, the next thing you know, they are putting at risk their life savings.

AUSTRAC's cryptocurrency taskforce says data from nine cryptocurrency ATM providers shows most users are over the age of 50, while 60- to 70-year-olds alone account for 29 per cent of all transactions by value. That's a lot of people and, generally speaking, a lot of money. These demographics, which are in stark contrast to the generally much younger demographics of cryptocurrency traders, suggest that these machines may be being used by scam victims rather than crypto enthusiasts.

That is of great concern. In his capacity as the Minister for Home Affairs, the member for Watson initially publicly flagged the likely introduction of legislation of this kind as part of a speech at the National Press Club on 16 October 2025. We can't seem to get the member for Watson at the Press Club at the moment for other speeches that he might perhaps be well advised to give, but we'll look forward to that in the not-too-distant future.

But, at the time, he framed the proposed new powers as a response to the increasing convergence of money laundering, scams, fraud, child exploitation—and all of us should just shake our heads; I said in a previous speech in this parliament today that people guilty of that sort of thing should never see the light of day and should be locked up for life, quite frankly, and the keys thrown away—but also organised crime, with particular emphasis on the role of crypto ATMs as a high-risk cash-to-crypto medium.

I do want to pay tribute to someone. I shouldn't go on too much about my Labor friends and colleagues, but Stephen Jones, who is now in Paris with the OECD and doing a good job for and on behalf of Australia, attended a very, very worthwhile and good scams conference in Wagga Wagga. It was at a forum that he and I held.

The noticeable aspect of that forum was the number of people with hair colour the same as mine. Yes, that's grey—or white, as my daughter often reminds me— Mr Hill: Silver. Mr McCORMACK: or silver, yes.

Thank you, Member for Bruce. I have to say scams are something that are parting a lot of good and hardworking people from their money. Anything that the government can do—by way of information, by way of these sorts of forums or by cracking down on this in a legal sense—should be encouraged.

Absolutely it should, because these scams are becoming more widespread, more targeted and more sophisticated. They are leading to people, particularly older people, losing their life savings. And it's simply not right.

This bill has, as I say, coalition support. We have said that we are not just going to give it a complete blank cheque. Obviously the Senate will have its say on this particular bill, various points and details about it, but it is a bill worthy of the House's support.