Legislation passed late last week has added real estate agents, lawyers, and accountants to Australia’s anti-money laundering and terror financing rules, a move that Austrac chief Brendan Thomas has welcomed.
Thomas said the changes will enable him to combat the more than $60 billion in harm that child exploitation, drug trafficking, scams, and human trafficking cause.
The requirement for real estate agents, lawyers, and accountants to comply with Australia’s anti-money laundering and terror financing laws will take effect as of July 2026, which Thomas says will give impacted businesses time to prepare for their implementation.
“We’ve had a hole in our regime for quite a long time now”, he told The AFR.
“We could see criminals walking straight through that hole, and this legislation gives us the strong opportunity to breach that and just make it harder for people to profit from crime”.
“Australia, at the moment, is falling foul of the international standards that the world expects to be in place to combat money laundering. It makes our economy weaker, and it gives our economy a bad reputation in the world’s eyes”.
“Money laundering and organised crime is a global business. We suffer the challenge of international criminals who commit crimes in other countries, laundering money and parking value here. [We] want to make sure that the international armour is as strengthened as it possibly can be against money laundering”, he said.
Australia first agreed to apply global “Tranche 2” anti-money laundering (AML) rules for non-financial assets (mainly property) in 2006.
Ever since, vested interests in the real estate, legal, and accounting professions have lobbied strongly against this AML legislation. This delayed implementation despite stakeholder consultations in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2017.
As a result, Australia became one of only five countries (out of 177) that still needed to satisfy its international commitment to strengthen anti-money laundering laws.
In turn, Australian property became a sanctuary for money launderers, particularly from China.
Labor has finally closed the money laundering net with the passage of this Tranche 2 AML legislation.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called on the Coalition to explain why it opposed the AML legislation.
“They voted against anti-money laundering provisions where people are paying cash from activities unknown, some of them in the millions of dollars for real estate”, he said.
“It’s beyond my comprehension why they could do that, but they have had an attitude of just voting against everything”.
The Albanese government should be commended for passing this legislation, as it certainly would not have happened under the Coalition.
