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

Ms LAWRENCE (Hasluck) (19:18): When I spoke in this place about the 2024 reforms, I said that money laundering was not some abstract or victimless offence. I said that it was the fundamental underpinning and enabler of most serious and organised criminal activity. That remains true today.

Money laundering is how criminals preserve the benefits of crime. It is how they disguise where their money comes from. It is how they reinvest those proceeds into further offending and how criminal enterprises grow stronger, more sophisticated and more harmful.

Behind laundered money, we find drug trafficking, cybercrime, child exploitation, tax evasion, scams, fraud, corruption and terrorism. There is a person, a child, a family, a business or a community that is affected by every one of those offences. The money might move silently, but the harm it finances is real.

In 2024, this parliament acted to close longstanding gaps in Australia's anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism-financing regime. Those reforms brought lawyers, accountants, real estate professionals, dealers in precious stones and metals, and other previously unregulated service providers within the regime. They strengthened reporting arrangements, modernised the treatment of legal professional privilege and expanded the ability of AUSTRAC to obtain information required for enforcement.

At that time, I told the House that our laws had to keep pace with the increasingly digital nature of the global financial system. I said that we had to close the gaps professional criminal organisations seek to exploit and prepare Australia not only for the risk before us then but for the likely directions of future development. I think we can all agree that the future has arrived very quickly.

The technology changes. The delivery channels change. The methods used to disguise criminal proceeds change.

But the objective of organised crime remains the same: to find the weakest point in the system and exploit it before regulators and law enforcement can respond. This bill is therefore the next practical step in the work we began in 2024 to strengthen the system. Schedule 1 establishes a framework under which high-risk mechanisms can be restricted or prohibited when their use has caused, will cause or is likely to cause significant harm to Australia's financial system, the Australian community or both, and when intervention is necessary in the public interest.

One clear example of this is the use of cryptocurrency ATMs. Obviously, cryptocurrency itself is not inherently criminal—new technology can create opportunities and improve services—and nor should every person who uses a crypto ATM be presumed to be engaged in wrongdoing. But we can't ignore the evidence about how these machines are actually being exploited.

Australia reportedly had around 2,000 cryptocurrency ATMs by October 2025, the highest number in the Asia-Pacific region. I'm sure you've all seen them in your service station, in your shopping centres or in tobacco stores. They've just popped up everywhere, often alongside traditional banking teller machines.

AUSTRAC estimated that almost 150,000 transactions, totalling more than $275 million, were occurring through crypto ATMs each year. Of these, 99 per cent were cash deposits used to purchase cryptocurrency, a transaction pattern that can make funds more difficult to trace and increase the risk of exploitation for money laundering, scams and money mule activity.

The evidence about victims is particularly disturbing. When AUSTRAC examined the 90 most prolific users of crypto ATMs during 2024, it found that 85 per cent were either scam victims or money mules who had been tricked or coerced into moving money—85 per cent. That's people we know.

That's our nanna, our uncle or our auntie. These are everyday people who have been taken advantage of because they've been scammed or they've been money mules who have been tricked or coerced into moving money. Between 1 January 2024 and 1 January 2025, ReportCyber received 150 reports of scams involving these crypto ATMs, with reported losses of more than $3 million.

The Australian Federal Police warned that this was likely a conservative figure because these scams, as we might imagine, are substantially underreported. So the people actually standing in front of these machines, by and large, are not themselves the sophisticated criminals; they are Australians who have often been manipulated, frightened, deceived or coerced.

You only need to look in your junk mail to see the type of emails that are going into homes every day, trying to do exactly that—to manipulate, frighten, deceive or coerce Australians out of their hard-earned money. They may believe they are protecting their savings. They may have been told they owe a debt, that their bank account has been compromised, that an investment opportunity is about to disappear or that someone they trust urgently needs money.

They may be precisely following directions from a scammer who has kept them on the telephone and isolated them from anyone who might intervene. For those victims, the speed and irreversibility of the transaction can be devastating. A financial system worthy of public confidence cannot simply watch this happen and say that nothing can be done because technology has moved too quickly.

The law must keep up. This bill provides that capacity. It enables restrictions concerning the volume or value of funds transferred, the method or destination of a transfer, or requirements for reporting entities to provide information or take action to mitigate risk.

Where proportionate safeguards are enough, restrictions can be used. Where a mechanism is producing serious harm that cannot otherwise be controlled, prohibition may be available. Importantly, this is not an arbitrary power.

The decision-maker must consider the nature and the extent of the harm, whether the proposed action is likely to address that harm, whether alternative mechanisms are available and any other relevant considerations. Consultation with affected persons and the relevant Commonwealth, state or territory regulator is ordinarily required for at least 30 days. Urgent action without prior consultation is reserved for exceptional circumstances, including where a mechanism is primarily being used for illicit financing and no other control can urgently mitigate the risk.

The framework also puts limits on how long these measures may operate. An instrument made without prior consultation can operate for no more than six months. Where consultation has occurred, an instrument may operate for up to three years.

Any extension must again satisfy the statutory tests and consultation requirements. Because these decisions are made by legislative instrument, they are subject to the framework for parliamentary oversight and scrutiny—most likely to the committee which I'm on, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. We do closely examine these kinds of powers.

Our report called for urgent action on cryptocurrency ATMs, finding that they are a significant channel for scams and financial crime, and the committee recommended that the restrictions or prohibitions affecting high-risk mechanisms be exercised by the responsible minister on the advice of the AUSTRAC CEO, strengthening that accountability and public confidence.

It also recommended greater transparency in consultation before restrictions are imposed. That is the proper role of parliamentary scrutiny—to ensure that the legislative response is effective, accountable and proportionate. In my speech on the 2024 amendments, I also said that we did not want legitimate business to be abused by criminals and that we understood different businesses faced different risks.

That principle remains today. Good regulation distinguishes between businesses that are deliberately facilitating wrongdoing, businesses that are failing to manage known risks and businesses that are trying in good faith to meet their obligations. We should target the harm without imposing unnecessary burdens on people doing the right thing.

The government consulted publicly on these reforms. Submissions were received from banking, accounting, legal, financial advice, payments and digital economy organisations. The bill also updates the definition of 'financing of terrorism'.

The Criminal Code Amendment (State Sponsors of Terrorism) Act 2025 creates offences relating to financing of state sponsors of terrorism and financing state terrorist acts. This bill brings those offences within the anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing framework. It also establishes regulation-making powers concerning relevant offences under the Charter of the United Nations Act and the Autonomous Sanctions Act.

That is necessary because terrorism financing does not stand still. Hostile actors can exploit financial systems, intermediaries, emerging technologies and international networks. Definitions across Commonwealth law must operate coherently so that new offences do not sit outside the financial intelligence and reporting framework intended to detect them.

The third schedule makes technical and clarifying amendments arising from the implementation of the 2020 reforms. These concern customer due diligence, politically exposed persons, reporting details, international value transfers, services and legal professional privilege. I have a lot more I want to say, but I appreciate I'm running down the clock, so I'll wrap up.

Two years ago, I did say that money laundering allowed organised crime groups to go on doing whatever they were doing without being disturbed. This bill is another step towards disturbing them. It is about intervening before a high-risk technology becomes an entrenched criminal channel.

It is about giving regulators the capacity to respond to the evidence of significant harm. And it is about stopping criminals from exploiting legitimate businesses and stopping scammers from exploiting vulnerable Australians. Our laws must keep pace with the criminals, our safeguards must keep pace with technology and our institutions must have the authority to act when new risks emerge.

This is what this bill provides, and I commend it to the House. Debate interrupted.