Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) | Hansard source

I will echo a lot of the comments of my colleague Senator Sharma there because he was right. Why are we rushing this through? I thought the priorities of the Albanese government this week were the social media ban and electoral reform, but we haven't got those. Instead, we've got this poorly drafted, ill-considered anti-money-laundering bill, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2024, that has zero stakeholder support. It beggars belief that we're here.

In typical Labor fashion, we've got a bill that is poorly drafted, with high-level legislative rules that will require regulations that have not been drafted yet. So how can anyone be confident that the implementation will actually work? In fact, they can't be, because the Attorney-General's Department is on the record noting that there is a lack of evidence in the context of the likely impact of these reforms on the amount of money laundered in any year. If the Attorney-General's Department isn't even confident that these reforms will have an impact, what are we doing? Why aren't we taking the time to sit down with stakeholders, have the conversations, get the feedback, draft some regulations, understand how they will actually land on the ground and then come back?

As Senator Sharma rightly said, the coalition is not against anti-money-laundering laws or counterterrorism financing laws. In fact, it was the coalition that started this process, following September 11. It was the coalition that introduced the first tranche of the anti-money-laundering counterterrorism financing legislation, in 2006. It was the coalition that instigated a review of the AML/CTF Act in 2017. It was the coalition that, after that sensible, considered, constructive review, put through the first amendments to this act. Those amendments included civil penalties, with hundreds of millions of dollars imposed on Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank, Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth. So the coalition is clearly in favour of strong, robust anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing laws. What we're not in favour of is rushed and ill-conceived amendments that will, by and large, have a disproportionate impact on the suburbs and the regions and on small business.

The regulatory costs of these proposed reforms alone will force many small businesses to close—and it will overwhelmingly happen outside metropolitan areas—because it has been estimated that, for a small business with a turnover of up to $2 million, these reforms will impose an additional cost of over $33,000 per annum. That is staff they can't employ or bills that they can't pay. That $33,000, it is now estimated, will impose a $13.9 billion cost on businesses over 10 years—$13.9 billion in regulatory costs.

That is not productivity. In this cost-of-living crisis, with the pressures on inflation, you are putting additional costs on small businesses that will not deliver an ounce of increased productivity. And people wonder why we can't get away from this sticky inflation! It is because this government doesn't understand what productivity is. They don't understand that the implementation of their policies, like their IR policies, cost businesses and mean that businesses are paying for things that hamper their productivity. That is why we cannot shake this sticky inflation.

At the end of the day, what are the businesses that will pay these costs? It's the accountants—my financial adviser, my accountant. It's my real estate agent. It's the real estate agents who manage sales and rentals—Albo's real estate agent; sorry, the Prime Minister's real estate agent—who will have to pay these costs.

Not at all. It is the country-town lawyers who run small practices. Most country-town lawyers are sole traders. They run small practices in rural and regional Australia. These are the sorts of businesses that will be paying the bill, paying the price for this reform—and I use that term loosely. They will be paying for these amendments that have zero support—because, while every stakeholder absolutely supports efforts to combat money laundering, we've got the Law Council, the Real Estate Institute, COSBOA and others now all on the public record as criticising this bill. COSBOA expressly noted the Attorney-General's failure to follow best practice by releasing an exposure draft. They said that the bill as it stands leaves the door open to costs, confusion and compliance headaches for small businesses.

Yet again, the failure to adequate consult is why we have another bill before this chamber that is not fit for purpose. There is a reason why we consult on important reforms and legislation. There is a reason why we use exposure drafts. There is a reason why we shouldn't be using non-disclosure agreements, but that's clearly this government's preferred practice.

There are also concerns about the constitutionality of this bill. The former Justice of the High Court, Geoffrey Nettle AC KC, has said that the bill is potentially unconstitutional in relation to barristers, and similar concerns have been raised in relation to solicitors. The concern is that, essentially, lawyers may be forced to report on their clients, but will not be able to tell their clients, or even the court, what they've done. I thought we had lawyer-client confidentiality. This is another example of a poor bill drafted after poor consultation and without getting adequate feedback.

I guess the Attorney-General just thinks that small businesses, lawyers and solicitors are all aiding and abetting drug traffickers and cybercriminals. When the Real Estate Institute of Australia had a look, they referred to the experiences in New Zealand, where businesses have been slugged between $30,000 and $60,000 each in implementation costs in exchange for an unquantified public benefit. But maybe the Attorney-General thinks the Real Estate Institute also stands with terrorists and money launderers.

Clearly, this bill is a mess. This bill needs an awful lot more work. We did send it to a committee. The committee did review it, and the report and the views that were flushed out through that process helped firm up our position that this bill should not be supported in its current form. As I said at the outset, we are very much in support of strong anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism-financing laws. We are the fathers of it. But there is no excuse to rush through a bill that has so many concerns, has so many stakeholders worried about its actual impact and has—I'm going to say it again—a $13.9 billion cost to business without a single improvement in productivity.

I would have thought that, after 2½ years in government, the Albanese government would've learnt how to draft bills, how to have proper consultation and how to be able to get consensus, particularly on an issue such as this, which should have bipartisan support. But the fact is that we've got this error-laden bill that has legal and constitutional questions over it and has the potential to cost small business an exorbitant amount of money. Even the Queensland Law Society has spoken out against this bill and is looking at other examples of what's happened overseas and compared that to what we've got before us. Labor should actually be a bit embarrassed by the process it has undertaken and by where we are today.

Again, I ask the question: why are we talking about this bill? I thought you had other priorities this week. We're about to end this year of parliament. We're about to go on the Christmas recess—and I hope everyone has a very safe festive season as they go on their merry way and celebrate whatever festivals they want to celebrate. To think, this is the last bill we're going to be properly debating. Thanks to the guillotine motion, we can't have proper debate about a lot of the other bills that we'll be addressing tonight when there were other important priorities that Labor wanted us to be talking about. But clearly not.

It just goes to show that this Labor government is so disorganised it can't even get a bill drafted in a way that people are confident about. We've got a shambolic government that is not focused; it has been distracted. They were distracted for the first two years of government by the Voice, and that's why they haven't yet learnt how to have proper consultation. They should have learnt from the Voice that they need to talk to grassroots communities, talk to the people who will be impacted the most—and actually listen—and then give clear, concise drafting instructions. Think about the regulations and how they will be rolled out and how they will be impacted. Get it right and you might get support. But, as it stands, we can't support this bill. There are too many flaws in it, so I urge the Senate to vote against it.