Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am waiting to hear that from the minister. Do they already have access to AUSTRAC? If that is the case it would be helpful to the debate to know that. If we are putting in place a regime to give them access and they have already got access, it makes you question what we are doing. I am still waiting to hear whether we can get that information. I have made the point before: we all want to stop the financing of terrorism, and legislation that we introduce that takes away the privacy of Australians needs to be justified and needs to be specific to that. Our concern is that this is not specific. If what was being proposed by the government was more specific, that would be a different matter and we would be able to look at that; but it is not. We think it is too open-ended and we are not satisfied with the safeguards that have been outlined.

We think that for the CEO of AUSTRAC to make the decision as to whether ASIS is doing its job or not is not the best way to go. We do not think that the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is able to provide the level of scrutiny that we would like to see. That is not to say that they cannot do some good things, but we do not think that they are able to provide the level of scrutiny we think is appropriate. The public is not made aware—in the memorandum of understanding, for example—how this will occur and what kind of analysis of financial records is going on, particularly for legitimate businesses that may be caught up in this. That is where our focus is, obviously. We are not here to defend those people who are financing terrorism; we are here for those people who get caught when the net is thrown wide. We want to make sure that there are safeguards in place to protect those people. I do not think I need to expand on it any more, other than to say that we think the scope is too wide for that access to ASIS. We think the case has not been made and we think it is not defined enough to the task that we are all focused on, which is stopping the financing of terrorism.