Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026
Ms CLUTTERHAM (Sturt) (19:04): I'm pleased to follow the contribution from the member for Monash. The member and I don't always agree on everything, but I respect the way she goes about her work in this place and the passion she shows for issues that are important to her. Like the member, I rise today to speak in support of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026.
The past decade has seen huge advancements in technology, artificial intelligence and cybercapability. We have never been more digitally connected, and there have never been more ways to do business. Technology, artificial intelligence and cybercapability are often used to advance living standards, create efficiencies and improve productivity.
These things make lives easier, make them better and make them more efficient. But the concept of what can go right, and what is going right, must of course be viewed in balance with what could go wrong and what is going wrong. The role of government is to facilitate the things that create these efficiencies, enhance productivity and improve the lives of working Australian families.
It's also the role of government to step in to mitigate the consequences when things do not go right. It's the role of government to prescribe appropriate authority and powers to relevant organisations and entities who act to protect Australians, and it's the role of government to ensure effective oversight of those powers and authorities. Human nature means that there will always be those who seek to exploit new technologies for their own gain, regardless of the effect that may have on others.
Serious and organised criminal actors will always change, adapt and find loopholes and new methods within the economic system to manipulate Australians for their own personal gain. Generating illicit profits and then laundering the proceeds of crime is the business model of many criminal actors who are well organised and dedicated to this pursuit. I often wonder about the gains that might be made, the advancements that our society might enjoy and the benefits that others might experience if those who embark on criminal pursuits dedicated that energy to fruitful endeavours.
Imagine if the choice those criminals made was not to dedicate their time and energy to exploitation and suffering but to dedicate it to lawful activity. Imagine the public resources that could be saved and redirected elsewhere; just imagine that. I ask this because the Australian Institute of Criminology estimates that serious and organised crime cost Australia up to $82.3 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, causing misery and financial hardship for victims.
Illicit profits are then reinvested in further serious crimes that cause untold harm to the Australian community and to our region. This estimate captures the direct and consequential costs of serious and organised crime in Australia, as well as the indirect costs of preventing and responding to serious and organised crime incurred by government entities, businesses and individuals.
But, of course, the need to expend public resources fighting organised crime is not something organised criminal actors care about. They don't care about anything other than themselves. They lack anything even remotely resembling empathy for others.
They also know that, in this country, governments care deeply about law and order, procedural fairness, due process, integrity, the highest standards of ethical conduct and the need to ensure sustainable and unbreakable public trust and confidence in government institutions. They know that governments have to balance an enormously complex array of views and circumstances.
Governments have to make repeated and difficult decisions about where resources are spent, because resources are not finite and are funded by the Australian taxpayer and so must be reasonable in amount and reasonably incurred. These considerations just do not feature in the thinking of criminal actors. They don't care about any of these things, just their own personal gain.
Their operations are underpinned by a complete disregard for the law, for public resources and for others. That's why this bill is so important in empowering the AUSTRAC CEO to fight organised and systemic financial crime, the proceeds of which total billions of dollars annually and always result from the causing of deliberate suffering to others. Those billions of dollars of illegitimate funds are generated from cybercrime, drug trafficking, tax evasion and child exploitation.
Many of those proceeds are then channelled into other authoritarian regimes in order to deliberately and systematically drive corruption and undermine the rule of law across the world. The rule of law is fundamental to democracy. As the Varieties of Democracy report for 2026 revealed recently, democracy is under pressure across the globe, going backwards at a rapid pace, with a reported mere seven per cent of the global population living in a liberal democracy.
The report found that 76 per cent of the world's population—or around six billion people—are living under autocratic rule with freedom of expression, freedom of association and free and fair elections either severely curtailed or denied to them. The illicit proceeds of crime and the criminal actors who generate them fund these autocracies, sustaining them, helping them grow and putting further pressure on liberal democracies.
I could never accept that this bill is just a technical bill with just a few minor amendments and a few additional powers. It is a critical bill. It is a statement of support for the rule of law, and it is a statement of support for liberal democracies—a statement that this government will do what it can to prevent the exploitation of Australians for criminal gain or to prop up autocratic and repressive regimes.
It is a statement of intent to say that this government, too, will adapt to new technologies that allow exploitation; that this government will prosecute offenders; and that this government will protect Australians and protect our precious liberal democracy. Crypto ATMs are a new mechanism that AUSTRAC has observed as being strongly linked to money-laundering scams, to fraud, to corruption, to illicit substances and to child exploitation.
AUSTRAC has found that a high percentage of regular users of crypto ATMs were victims of scams or had been manipulated or pressured into moving money via these machines. Indeed, law enforcement agencies in Australia have observed that criminal gain is unfortunately a substantive purpose for which cryptocurrency ATMs are used. There are, of course, lawful, genuine investors who have invested in cryptocurrency and who use crypto ATMs for legitimate purposes.
Those investors have nothing to worry about with respect to this bill. To the contrary, given the risks that are involved in investing of this nature, this bill is designed to protect those genuine investors as well as ordinary Australians who may find themselves victim of an illicit scam. That is why this bill responds to crypto ATMs and the broader modern financial crime environment, which facilitates serious crimes and harms both Australia's financial systems, the community and our democracy.
The bill does this in a number of ways. Firstly, schedule 1 to the bill will introduce a new framework in the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 to empower the AUSTRAC CEO to restrict or prohibit businesses regulated under the AML/CTF regime from using a high-risk product, service, delivery channel or thing to protect the Australian community.
When considering whether a restriction or prohibition is necessary and in the public interest, the AUSTRAC CEO will be required to take into account specific matters, including the nature and effect of the harm, the effect the proposed restriction will have on the harm and whether there are alternative channels to provide the service. What businesses will be regulated?
Australia's anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing regime uses a designated services model for regulation such that, if a business provides one or more designated services, it is covered by the AML/CTF regime which then requires a business to put in place measures to prevent exploitation by criminals, including early identification of criminality or potential criminal activity.
It's important to note that not all of the services provided by a particular business will be a designated service. These include a range of business activities in a number of sectors including the financial services, gold bullion, remittance, virtual asset service providers, real estate, professional services and dealers in precious metals, stones and products sectors.
To ensure that the new power granted to the AUSTRAC CEO is appropriately targeted, the AUSTRAC CEO must be satisfied of the significant harm of the high-risk mechanism before exercising the power. They must also be satisfied that a restriction or prohibition is necessary in the public interest. Whilst this new power is intended to support AUSTRAC's flexible, risk based response to emerging and evolving money-laundering and terrorism-financing risks, it's also balanced against the need to ensure that innovation in technology and in business models is not paralysed and can grow and develop fairly.
Then we have schedule 2 of the bill, which amends the meaning of 'financing of terrorism' in section 5 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, which currently outlines four types of conduct that qualify as financing of terrorism to cross-refer to new offences introduced into the Criminal Code Act for financing a state sponsor of terrorism.
Updates reflecting developments in Australian sanctions laws on terrorism financing will also be included in that definition, with in-built flexibility to facilitate new sanctions offences to be prescribed in the future. Schedule 3 of the bill is a nod to amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 that were identified through the implementation of significant reforms enacted by the Albanese Labor government through the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024, which were directed at ensuring that Australia could not be used as an international back door for illicit funds.
These amendments will make compliance easier for regulated Australian businesses who have obligations under these laws while still delivering strong anti-money-laundering outcomes. The importance of this bill cannot be underestimated. Being very clear and appropriately expansive about what qualifies as the financing of terrorism is critical.
A compliance regime that regulated businesses can meet is critical. Powers to prevent the criminal abuse of our economy and the suffering this causes to Australians, to communities, to our region and, indeed, across the globe are critical. There is much to lose if a crime generates illicit profits.
The proceeds are used to destabilise and damage democracies. Governments know that criminals are looking for loopholes. This government will always work to shut them down in a manner that is consistent with the rule of law but with a determination that the Australian people expect and deserve.
I commend the bill to the House.