Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for that lengthy response. But it actually highlights a difficulty. I do not take a restrictive view of these arrangements; I take a more expansive view. I think it is appropriate, as you would gather from my support for the Labor Party’s amendment, for international bodies such as the United Nations and Interpol to be in the frame, if you like, of anti-money-laundering cooperation internationally periodically, as appropriate and where the circumstances warrant it.

Minister, I think your answer unnecessarily limits the prospects that will be before our own law enforcement agencies and the realities of world money laundering. Let me give you an example, which I suggest might not be hypothetical but might actually be very common. The British government are the foreign government we are dealing with, and they make a request to us. But on the same money-laundering issue they are dealing with, for instance, the United States government—and we would have no qualms about cooperation with them—the French government and Interpol. I cannot conceive of a situation where the Chief Executive Officer of AUSTRAC would say to the British government: ‘Thank you for application. You can use this information as requested by you to interact with the French and the United States governments with respect to these particular targets. But, by the way, we are prohibiting you from using Interpol,’ or, ‘We are prohibiting you from interacting with the United Nations.’ That just does not make sense to me.

So, whilst you may not have formally designated them, I would think there is very little likelihood of those sorts of restrictions being put in writing to a government which is interacting with a number of other governments and which might want to interact with an international agency such as Interpol where that ties into the money-laundering circumstance. So, unless you are going to confirm to me that the Chief Executive Officer of AUSTRAC will in each case prohibit each foreign government from dealing with the United Nations or Interpol, if that was part of the web, I will assume that it is likely to happen.