David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate that we won't be opposing the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (Special Operations and Special Investigations) Bill 2022. This is a bill to amend the Australian Crime Commission Act and to provide greater certainty, but really it is just procedural amendments and drafting amendments with respect to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission board's powers to authorise special ACIC operations and special ACIC investigations.

Special ACIC operations and investigations are tools used by the ACIC to obtain information that the ACIC determines would not be able to be obtained without the use of those coercive powers. Those powers have primarily been used to collect, assess and then disseminate to state and territory policing and intelligence agencies intelligence and policing information about serious and organised crime—the intent being to have a kind of national picture of the threat to Australia from organised crime. We know, from a series of responses we've had from the ACIC in estimates and in the oversight committee, that, overwhelmingly, organised crime in this country is funded by illegal drugs. In the most recent oversight committee hearing with the ACIC, the ACIC estimated that the illegal drug market in the country is some $10.4 billion, which doesn't include the illegal cannabis market. They didn't really have a grip on the size of the illegal cannabis market. That $10.4 billion plus is often filtered through real estate agents, lawyers, poker machines and casinos and it is the primary source of illegal funds for organised crime in this country.

The ACIC has now, for a numb and er of years, been reporting on its success in disrupting the illegal drug market, primarily using the special operations and special investigations tools that are the subject of this bill. It's unfortunate to say that it hasn't been successful. I think in the last two years the ACIC's intelligence was—in part, at least—responsible for the seizure of approximately $1.4 billion worth of illegal drugs in each year. That's the street value. Of course, by the end of each year, that had made absolutely no difference to the availability or price of illegal drugs in the country. That is because of the obscene profits that are made by organised crime through the sale of illegal drugs in this country. In the evidence that they gave to the committee just last week, the ACIC's estimation was that cocaine, for example, in South America costs about $1,000 a kilo, but the sale price here when organised crime lands cocaine and sells it in Australia is somewhere between $180,000 and $250,000 a kilo. With that kind of mark-up, if organised crime loses 10 per cent of the cocaine and other drugs that they bring into the country, it's not even noticeable in terms of their end-of-year profits.

For all of the work that the ACIC does, for all of the integration that they do with state and territory police and for all of these coercive powers, when it comes to the primary industry they're seeking to disrupt, they have proven incapable, and they will continue to prove incapable given that gap between the cost of these drugs and precursor chemicals on the black market internationally and the price that's obtained by organised crime selling them in the country. The model that we have now and the war on drugs are fundamentally not working, and the ACIC's results, notwithstanding substantial effort and investment, are proof that the war on drugs is not working in this country.

When it comes to the specific provisions of this bill, we have separately satisfied ourselves that it makes no harmful changes to the oversight of special operations and special investigations. It would be fair to say, though, we haven't been assisted by the information provided in the second reading speech on behalf of the government or in the explanatory memorandum. To quote from the explanatory memorandum:

The Bill makes clearer the process for the Board to make and frame determinations to undertake a special ACIC operation or special ACIC investigation. It does this by reducing the multi-layered definitions that exist in the ACC Act, simplifying the determination drafting process and making the determinations easier to understand. The amendments ensure that the Board can continue to make the necessary determinations to authorise special ACIC operations and special ACIC investigations to occur .

That sheds more darkness than light on what the bill does. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the explanatory memorandum and the contributions we've gotten from the government behind this bill. But, as I've said, we have separately satisfied ourselves that it does no harm. It does appear to provide some marginal streamlining and clarity for how these special investigations and operations are authorised. To the extent that there's greater clarity about how these coercive powers are authorised, we hope that will provide for greater opportunities for the law to be followed in the letter and the spirit, and for those reasons we don't oppose the bill.