David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

With respect to reporting it may—in order to access the information. There is that other aspect; you are quite right. In terms of prosecution—and you can talk about Wickenby or any other prosecution—it provides intelligence to the enforcement agencies. The enforcement agencies then, using that information, go forward and accumulate the case. It may be that they revert back to AUSTRAC in the future, during the investigation, but the information is intelligence information. They take the intelligence and, if it was a bank account transaction, the AUSTRAC information would not necessarily be relevant to that. It would identify it but the bank records would be seized and the bank records would be, under the best evidence rule, the evidence that would be produced to substantiate the case—not the fact that there was some data on the AUSTRAC database. Do you follow what I am saying here?

The information flows from the intelligence gathering agency, AUSTRAC, to the enforcement agencies. Just keep that in mind. That is the way the system is designed to work. Indeed, there may be some obscure circumstances where evidence is required—I would not want to predict what can happen in cases—but it is not intended to be like that. It is simply to provide intelligence. The enforcement agencies would then go forward and on the basis of what they had received the designated agencies would prepare a case that was suitable for prosecution. That is the way it works.