Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026
Mr LIM (Tangney) (09:18): I rise to make my contribution on the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026. This bill delivers on the reforms announced by the Minister for Home Affairs last October to crack down on money laundering through high-risk mechanisms, particularly crypto ATMs. For some time, our security agencies have been warning us about the overlapping threats to our national security.
In today's environment, we no longer see terrorism, foreign interference, organised crime, money laundering, people smuggling and espionage as separate problems. They do not happen on their own. More and more, our security agencies are seeing these threats connect and overlap.
The same people, money and networks can be involved in more than one type of harm. Almost all the different threats we face include money laundering. Money laundering is an enabler of serious crime.
New technologies are being used more and more by criminals to generate illicit profit and launder the proceeds of crime. Digital currencies, like cryptocurrencies, can make this easier. These reforms are aimed at addressing this issue directly.
Many people use cryptocurrencies. Crypto is a part of our world, and there are people who are using cryptocurrency for legitimate investment or as an economic tool. These reforms are not aimed at them.
When crypto is purchased online, through a bank account, a transaction is created that can be traced. However, when using a crypto ATM, this does not always happen. When crypto is purchased using cash, using a crypto ATM, there is limited identification involved.
The capacity to trace this transaction is far less than when crypto is purchased using a bank account. As a former police officer, I do understand the concerns with not being able to trace these transactions. I've worked on investigations involving money laundering, and being able to trace transactions was important in our collection of evidence.
I also understand how threats are becoming increasingly interconnected and, therefore, the need to have these reforms. In my time as a police officer, I saw how money laundering was connected to different serious crimes, including criminal activity that was brought here from overseas. Just six years ago, there were only 23 crypto ATMs in Australia.
Today there are 2,000 crypto ATMs. The growth over this period has been rapid. Australia is ranked third in the world for the number of crypto ATMs.
Every year, approximately 150,000 transactions, totalling about $275 million, go through crypto ATMs. Almost all of these transactions—about 99 per cent—are deposits. This means most people are putting cash into the machine and getting cryptocurrency in return.
People use crypto ATMs for different reasons. Of course, not every person, or every cash deposit, is doing the wrong thing. Many people are acting lawfully.
But cash deposits can also be attractive to people who are doing the wrong things. Cash is harder to trace or track than money moved through a bank account. When cash is turned into crypto using an ATM it can be harder for our security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to follow the money.
I want to share a brief story from my time as a police officer. We stopped a car that had arrived from over east with a lot of cash. The driver told us that the money was rightfully theirs, but we opened up some investigations.
While I will leave out the details of that investigation, the point is to share how things have changed dramatically in recent years and to make the point that, as things change, we have to respond and evolve. These new reforms are intended to support a flexible, risk based response to emerging and evolving money laundering and terrorism financing risk while, at the same time, still allowing reporting entities to use innovative technologies and business models.
From my own experience as a police officer dealing with money laundering, I believe these reforms are important ones. This bill makes targeted amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 to provide a power to restrict the use of high-risk products, services, delivery channels and other mechanisms to provide a designated service.
Scams are becoming more and more sophisticated. I see this in my own electorate of Tangney with constituents who have been scammed by convincing phone calls. We need to provide more protection to the public.
The bill does a few things. It will allow the AUSTRAC CEO to regulate the use of high-risk mechanisms through general sector-wide restriction and prohibition. It will also amend the meaning of 'financing of terrorism' in section 5 of the AML/CTF Act to reference new offences introduced in the Criminal Code Act 1995 for financing a state sponsor of terrorism.
The amendments will clarify and improve the operation and provision introduced by the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024. Last year, the Minister for Home Affairs announced that the government would introduce new legislation to give AUSTRAC the power to restrict or prohibit high-risk products, services and delivery channels.
With respect to the new framework, AUSTRAC will be able to disrupt the mechanism that criminal actors are using to harm our community. These include cryptocurrency ATMs. The framework does require the AUSTRAC CEO to consider several things when considering if this restriction or prohibition is in the public interest.
These factors include the nature and the effect of the harm and what effect the restriction would have on the harm. This power is not meant to stop a reporting entity from using something just because it involves digital assets or speculative activity or just because there are financial or investment risks. But, as money-laundering and terrorism-financing risk emerge and evolve, it is important to have a flexible, risk based response.
Schedule 2 of the bill will amend the meaning of 'financing of terrorism' in section 5 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act. The amendments will include new offences introduced in the Criminal Code Act 1995 by the Criminal Code Amendment (State Sponsors of Terrorism) Act 2025 for financing a state sponsor of terrorism. Schedule 3 makes several technical changes to help businesses meet and implement their obligations under these rules.
These amendments will help with due diligence requirements and will help clarify how these provisions work in practice. This is important as businesses must maintain appropriate procedures and systems to control relevant money-laundering and terrorism-financing risk. I have, unfortunately, in my time as a police officer investigated serious crime happening in Western Australia.
Today, I'm also approached by constituents of Tangney who have been victims of scams. In many of these situations, money laundering has enabled these crimes to take place, and this needs to be stopped. In all these situations, the human impacts are far reaching and devastating.
I'm pleased to speak in support of this bill.