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Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Page: 118


Senator JOHNSTON (Minister for Justice and Customs) (5:47 PM) —The situation is that AUSTRAC is not a law enforcer; it is an intelligence-gathering agency and a regulator. In the circumstances of having ASIO have the information, there is a lot of synergy between ASIO and ASIS. ASIS carries out a number of similar functions. It was always intended that there would be a capacity to provide the sort of intelligence gathered by AUSTRAC through its monitoring and anti-money-laundering capability to foreign governments. In some circumstances, it is the case that ASIS has a better capacity to provide that intelligence and to utilise that intelligence. We are simply expanding the capacity and capability to disseminate the information to the benefit of fighting money laundering.