Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I have several strong reservations about this bill. More than any other bill, the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019 exemplifies the nanny state that this government pretends it has not become. Restricting peoples' ability to purchase products with cash and forcing them to use banks or other financial intermediaries for purchases over $10,000 is an unreasonable restriction on their personal freedom. I know that cash can be a vehicle for money-laundering, but it is grossly unfair to label everyone who pays in cash as a criminal. I know that the government has a role to be diligent against money-laundering, but this has not stopped them from political inaction on the allegations of money-laundering levelled at Crown casino. The government was remarkably low-key in its commentary when the Commonwealth Bank of Australia was found to have failed to report more than 53,000 transactions of $10,000 or more through its supposedly intelligent depositing machines. For a period of three years the Commonwealth Bank also failed to do its required red-flag checks on transactions on over three-quarters of a million bank accounts.

Let's be clear: as the member for Clark says, we have AUSTRAC, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, a federal government department that's funded to the tune of $100 million in the 2019-20 budget. They are there purely to track money-laundering. They are there purely to look at criminal transactions related to money. As the member for Clark says, what is happening with AUSTRAC? What is happening? On the topic of banks, the other reason that I really struggle with this bill is that bank branches are being ripped out of rural and regional communities at a rapid rate of knots. Where do you suppose we go to bank this? We just do not have the access to banking and financial services that we used to, and not everyone was born into the digital generation.

Older Australians facing the digital divide and who do not live in a metropolis, who do not live in a CBD, will be seriously disadvantaged by this bill. In just the last few years in Mayo our electorate has lost an ANZ at Goolwa, and ANZ at Lobethal, the Commonwealth Bank of Stirling and the Commonwealth Bank of Strathalbyn. If you go back a few more years the number almost doubles. There is not even a bank in Hahndorf. That is the busiest tourist town in South Australia. In some communities cash can genuinely be the only option. How many elderly people who sell their second-hand car will have an EFTPOS machine and a wi-fi connection able to do the transaction? We're just not serious. Clearly nobody from the government side has attended a clearing sale lately. The banks have taken away our chequebooks. They have done everything possible to remove cheque accounts, so we are really disadvantaging regional and rural Australians with this bill.

This bill has not only a strict liability offence for making a cash transaction over $10,000 but also a mental element defence for doing so, yet the mental element defence looks only at whether the person knew that there was a real risk that the payment would in essence result in their committing the strict liability offence, not whether the person actually intended to make the cash payment for some nefarious purpose. We are focusing on criminalising their knowledge of risk rather than focusing on criminalising black economy activities that we actually want to stop. If we want to address money laundering, if we're really serious about this, we need to look at the gambling industry. We have footage. We know that that is where money gets washed. We had a vote in this place last week, and both the major parties had no interest at all. They saw the footage and had no interest at all.

Another issue that has been raised with me by many people is that we have interest rates at an all-time low and we don't know, as I heard this morning on AM, whether the interest rates are going to go down further than the three-quarters of a per cent that they are currently. We can look at international examples. The Bank of Japan adopted a negative interest rate in January 2016, essentially meaning it costs money for people with savings to have their money in the bank. But, with this bill, we are not providing them with any alternative, and that is just plain wrong.

While Central Alliance will reserve its position in the Senate until the Senate inquiry into the bill concludes, on the basis of the information currently available and the level of concern—very real concern—in my community, particularly from older members, about this bill, knowing that I am truly representing a regional and rural community that the banks have left, I cannot support this bill in the House.

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