Thank you – I'd like to start by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional owners of the lands around the Rocks.
Thank you for the invitation to speak today about our efforts to combat money laundering and financial crime.
Banking and finance as an industry is a poster child of globalisation.
After trade in physical goods, perhaps the fastest cross-border industry to grow was the movement of money and now, as we all know, money can move around the world in microseconds.
Which brings me to a challenging aspect of globalisation.
Because globalisation isn't just the movement and transfer of legitimate goods, services, ideas and content around the world.
Globalisation has a dark side a side that thrives on gaps and holes between jurisdictions, a place in-between, where not just legitimate things but also bad things run to hide.
Our globalised landscape is a complex place where fraud can occur, where crime and ill-gotten money can hide, where identities can disappear, or be taken away every year, 2 to 5 percent of global GDP – as much as US$2 trillion – is moved around the world as dirty money leaving the impacts to be felt, very personally, by the real people living in countries the fraud and black money has left behind.
As a government within a globalised society, we continue to work, every day, every week, every month and every year, to build systems that prevent fraud that keep our people, our communities and our money, safe.
Last year alone the AFP charged 126 people with 158 money laundering offences.
We know that criminal groups involved in money laundering are responsible for more than twice as much crime related harm as groups not involved in money laundering.
In fact, we know every year a criminal group is able to launder funds, it increases the risk of harm they cause to the community by 49 per cent.
And we know these activities cause up to $68.7 billion in harm to the Australian community every year, facilitating crimes such as drug trafficking, cybercrime, scams, child exploitation and human trafficking.
We also know a small number of Australians deliberately abuse our financial systems for illegal benefit.
Choosing greed over decency. And always looking for ways to benefit at the expense of others.
These are not victimless crimes.
These crimes impact individuals – people's identities are stolen, and savings drained.
These crimes impact the community – taking away resourcing for essential services.
These crimes impact our security – financing the proliferation of weapons and terrorist groups, or the evasion of sanctions.
These crimes are diverse in nature, and scale, and the extent of the harm that is caused.
And they can happen in Australia or offshore, aided and abetted by leaps and bounds in connectivity and technology.
But we have a strong regime to fight money laundering and financial crime.
The central element is our Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.
The Act provides the means to deter, detect, and disrupt money laundering and terrorism financing.
But the international finance environment is ever changing, and the legislation needs to evolve to continue to protect the integrity of our financial system and our communities.
For a long time, the legislation failed to regulate professionals operating as gatekeepers to the financial system - like lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, or dealers in precious metals and stones.
It left these professions – with the networks to facilitate high-value, cross border transactions, with large amounts of cash – extremely vulnerable.
That's why late last year we passed the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act.
The amendments strengthen Australia's response to money laundering and financial crime, by bringing these high-risk industries into the regime and providing new powers for AUSTRAC.
These gatekeeper businesses are now asked to assess their illicit financing risks and put in place controls to prevent the exploitation of their services.
And the information provided by these businesses helps law enforcement and national security agencies protect the Australian community.
The reforms also harden the digital environment against criminal exploitation by regulating an additional four services provided by cryptocurrency providers, and updating the definition used in the Act to include emerging technologies.
The amendments close gaps, strengthen our regulatory regime, and minimise regulatory burdens for businesses.
We are working with industry to develop the rules, regulations and guidance to implement the reforms.
Regulations which will establish a framework for private-to-private information sharing in specific circumstances, to facilitate public-private partnerships like the AUSTRAC-led Fintel Alliance and allow relevant offences relating to proliferation financing to be proscribed under this regime.
These changes are important, because they strengthen our position for the upcoming fifth-round mutual evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force.
The Task Force is the inter-governmental body responsible for setting and assessing implementation of legal, regulatory, and operational standards for combating money laundering and other financial crime.
As a member, our Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism regime will soon be subject to an in-depth, comprehensive assessment against the Task Force standards over 2026–27, known as a Mutual Evaluation.
This will look at the strength of our frameworks in Australia – and most importantly— examine the real-world effectiveness of public and private sector action against criminal activity across the financial ecosystem.
It is important we achieve a strong result to demonstrate the stability of Australia's financial system and its resilience to criminal exploitation.
This large national coordination effort, across policy, regulatory, intelligence and law enforcement agencies at the Commonwealth and state and territory levels, as well as industry, is already underway.
In our interconnected, global financial system, the spread of new technologies and mediums creates a challenging environment for us to stay ahead of.
Transnational crime groups are always looking for new technologies, facilitators, and offshore service providers.
The crime is borderless. It is not one we can combat on our own.
And so we are engaging with partners in regional and international forums to help lift their standards at the same time.
Just last year we hosted counterparts from ASEAN for the Financial Intelligence Consultative Group Plenary – to promote, enhance and strengthen collaboration on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing.
We are also working with the FATF to promote the effective implementation of legal, regulatory, and operational measures to combat financial crime.
And we will continue to advocate for the implementation of certain regulatory standards in multilateral fora – like the UN, OECD, G20 and APEC.
We are also working with countries in our region to build skills, capability and tradecraft – so collectively, we can better understand, detect, prevent and disrupt financial crime.
I'm happy to say in May last year, AUSTRAC hosted participants from eight countries in Sydney for a one-week Financial Intelligence Analysts Course.
A course which helped participants improve their knowledge in collecting and analysing financial data, and finding patterns in financial crimes.
We are also continuing to engage in capacity building initiatives to help countries better respond to financial crime and its challenges.
This includes initiatives run through our Official Development Assistance programs, and technical workshops delivered by the ATO in partnership with host countries in our region.
Lastly, we continue to work on ways to exchange information and intelligence.
Australia, through AUSTRAC, is a founding member of The Egmont Group – which contains more than 174 financial intelligence units from around the world.
With this Group, member countries have a platform to securely exchange financial intelligence and expertise - and stay abreast of new and emerging typologies, methods, and trends.
It is also a priority to strengthen identity security at home to prevent crime against Australians – and support victims to recover.
The Australian Passport is one of the most recognisable identity documents in circulation.
And it's a target for criminals. But we're already a step ahead.
The Australian Passport is a fundamental enabler of Australia's Identity Verification Services, which allow government and industry to compare information on identity documents against government records through a secure, online system.
Many of the businesses here today use the Document Verification Service to validate Australian Passports and other documents – helping to meet your obligations under our Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing regime.
The data Australians provide when they apply for a Passport is protected with sophisticated technology, including face biometrics.
In-house biometrics capabilities are prominent across my portfolio and supplemented by cross government and academic research and testing.
The government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to enhance and expand the use of Digital Identity to protect Australians doing business online.
With myID, Australians are able to prove who they are by taking a selfie, which is then compared against the photo in their passport.
This brings together biometrics and digital services to provide secure, convenient services for Australians.
An investment that helps protect Australians from major data breaches and online attacks helping us to stay ahead of the emerging technologies that threaten the integrity of our identity and financial systems and giving Australians confidence to engage with the world.
All of this work combined makes it clear: the trust of our people, safety and wellbeing of our community, economic prosperity of our businesses, and our national security, cannot be sacrificed on the altar of globalisation.
So we are closing the gaps, and staying one step ahead.
Thank you.