Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

What there seems to be, Minister, is a massive hole in how you actually address sharing of financial intelligence information with overseas jurisdictions. What we have now discovered is that AUSTRAC cannot, with its relevant safeguards, share it with Interpol—which is effectively a very large organisation designed to assist in intelligence sharing and information sharing and be able to assist others. But it is not only Interpol; it is other bodies as well, it seems. What you seem to have is a situation where AUSTRAC can share it with a foreign intelligence organisation but not with Interpol, with a supranational multilateral body—with the relevant safeguards; we are not talking about open access. We are talking about where there is a properly constituted, demonstrated reason for sharing intelligence. One example that comes to mind is AWB Ltd.

What you have got is this hole where you want to be able to insulate AUSTRAC—and your government, it seems—to ensure that, if the Volcker inquiry wants information, it cannot get it. It may be necessary for the United Nations, in a properly constituted inquiry, to have that relevant information or at least be able to access it with the relevant safeguards. The other position you would have is that, if you do not want to cooperate with bodies such as Interpol, you would hide behind that legislation. Mr Volcker himself described the level of cooperation offered by the Howard government as ‘beyond reticent, even forbidding’. That is how Volcker described this government in terms of providing information. I interrupted Senator Murray’s train of thought; but I will come back to this shortly.