April 2006 Top Story:
**MLI ARCHIVE***
Ellison: no extension to consultation period
The financial services and legal community has indicated its disappointment with the Justice Minister’s comments that the public consultation period for the government’s new anti-money laundering legislation will not be extended past the 13 April deadline.
In early April, Senator Chris Ellison was still refusing calls by the legal and finance industries to extend the consultation period on the new legislation, despite some rules attached to the new legislation only being released a week previously.
Industry figures have also indicated disappointment with the length of time it has taken for the government to issue the first iteration of the draft legislation.
Anna Lenahan, a partner with Allens Arthur Robinson, said: “We thought we would get the rules related to risk triggers and customer identification by February.”
Lenahan, who is involved in an industry group consulting with the government about the new anti-money laundering legislation, said the government implemented a two-tiered process for releasing the exposure draft of the new legislation.
Initially, the high-level draft legislation was released, followed by more detailed rules related to the initial draft of the bill.
“Ideally, the rules would have been released with the legislation to allow time for proper consultation,” Lenahan said.
Lenahan said the implication of the short consultation period was that “the legislation will be introduced and we will effectively have consultation during the transition period”.
“It will mean industry will have to canvass for changes, which will draw out the process,” she said.
Gary Gill, a partner within KPMG’s forensics team, said that despite the short consultation period, people should “still feel free to comment”.
“People now have time to provide comment – even if it’s only high level comment,” Gill added.
However, Steve Ingram, lead anti-money laundering partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, was less concerned with the short time frame for consultation over the new legislation, and said consultation over the new law was “just the end of the first step of the process”.
“We’re working in a whole new world, with a whole new risk framework. If you look at the overseas experience, it’s taken years to refine and revise new anti-money laundering laws and the same will happen here,” Ingram said.
But Joe Ludwig, Labor Shadow Minister for Justice, is not convinced the government’s approach is the correct one.
“Labor is concerned that the process is being rushed at the busy end after the government sat on its hands for two full years in developing the draft legislation.
“It is irresponsible now for the Minister to claim urgency when the brief has been sitting on his desk for two years,’ said Ludwig.
“We will be scrutinising this legislation to ensure that it uses a sensible risk-based approach . . . our approach on this has been to develop a model that delivers security and market integrity without red tape and an unacceptable cost imposition.
“After all, dramatic increase in costs will simply be passed on to the consumer. We think we have that model, and you’ll be hearing more on this front later,” he says.
DelMonte Publications April 2006
