Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) | Hansard source

Do you know what? We could hang out all weekend. What a great time that would be! Love it! We're back in February. We don't need to ram these through if there's not going to be an early election. So Mr Albanese needs to come clean. Is he putting the Australian people at risk by ramming through these 31 pieces of legislation, like they have so many other pieces of legislation? They are in such total shambles and chaos that they never have time for a proper committee process and they never have time for proper review. This government that was going to be so transparent and was going to be about integrity and openness has been the most opaque government I think we've ever seen. The way that they're behaving is unbelievable.

This bill that we're now debating, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2024—no-one is saying we want money laundering. No-one is saying that. Just because you come up with a sexy name that sounds like this is the problem you're solving—it was actually in the Howard years that movements were first made and things were introduced. The AML/CTF Act was introduced in the Howard years. It was a Howard government initiative, and it came about after September 11, in particular reference to money funnelling into terror organisations.

The coalition has a very strong record in this area. But what we don't have a strong record on—and it's a record we never, ever want and one I don't think anyone could ever match—is the volume of red tape that this government is continuing to layer on small and family businesses. They're constantly being bombarded. It doesn't matter whether it's, all of a sudden, climate reporting on how many cows you've got and how many times that cow broke wind in a paddock. You've got to account for that now, and, when you've got to go to the accountant, it's going to cost you more because they've now got to find an extra $33,000 a year to pay for their red tape burden.

This is a government who is clearly hell-bent on destroying business, on destroying jobs and on destroying the Australian way of life—the aspiration and the dreams that Australians have about owning their own business and working for themselves. But, as someone who has run a small family business, I can tell you that the work doesn't stop when the shop closes, We did haven't a shop; we had an agricultural contracting business. But I can tell you that it was 24/7, whether it was working on the accounts, chasing up clients, sorting out maintenance and repairs or moving around the state to where the different work was being done at the different times of harvest. It doesn't stop. But that's what having your own business is, and it's unfortunate that no-one in the government has that experience, because, if they did, they might not bring forward this ridiculous sort of legislation that will destroy businesses, will destroy jobs and will push further costs onto other small businesses that are utilising their services.

It's not only double-dipping; it's triple-dipping, when you go through all the different agencies and organisations that are going to have to do these checks. It's just insanity—absolute and utter insanity. But it's not only unsane; it's potentially unconstitutional. I know Senator Payman got very upset when Senator Hanson suggested she should refer herself to the High Court—something I fully support Senator Hanson on, having been through the High Court myself; there are a number of people in here who were subjected to section 44. But we could also be back to the High Court with this, because the Law Council of Australia and the Australian Bar Association have both said that this legislation puts at risk the relationship between a lawyer and a client. It means that a lawyer may have to refer their client on and report on their client without even letting the client know.

A fundamental tenet of legal representation and legal advice is the confidentiality between a lawyer and their client. The fact that this bill would impose a burden on those lawyers to potentially report clients outside of that relationship means that it could be unconstitutional. So we could put these businesses through all of this—all the cost of putting this legislation in place and all the imposts. Now, we don't have any funding going to businesses. There's no support going to business with regard to software updates to help them manage this process. There's no support there. It was only the other day that someone mentioned to me—I don't know if it was you, Senator Reynolds—the expenditure on updating of the software of one of the departments. It was hundreds of millions of dollars.