Senator Dean Smith
Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury
Liberal Senator for Western Australia
TRANSCRIPT – INTERVIEW WITH GARY ADSHEAD, 6PR
28 July 2023
E&OE
GARY ADSHEAD:
There is an inquiry, you’re probably aware, into Perth Mint. Dean Smith, the Senator, got up an inquiry, a select committee within the Senate. Now it’s held its first hearing. It’s due to come here next week. The Senator joins me on the line. Thanks for your time, Senator.
DEAN SMITH:
Good morning, Gary.
GARY ADSHEAD:
I’ll start, if you don’t mind, there was an exchange yesterday, it was Senator Dorinda Cox. She had sort of been leading into questions with some of the officials you had before you, and she talked about some of the concerns around Perth Mint. And then I think you’ll hear, Senator Glenn Sterle, of course, from WA. He also tunes in, let’s have a listen to this because it was quite a statement.
[EXCERPT FROM HEARING PLAYED]
GARY ADSHEAD:
Is that new information, Senator, or is it some of the stuff that we’ve heard?
DEAN SMITH:
Gary, it’s not knowledge that I have. Not at all. And they wouldn’t have been comments that I would’ve made in my capacity as chair of the committee. I think it is important to note that as the committee hearing went on Senator Cox did come back and clarify her remarks. But they were not comments or knowledge that I have. It’s really important that when we conduct this inquiry, and this is what I’ve said to colleagues, that we do it in a spirit of bipartisanship because we are dealing with the domestic and international reputation of Perth Mint and the Gold Corp, and that’s very important for WA’s standing here in Australia but also internationally. So, I wouldn’t have made those remarks.
GARY ADSHEAD:
It sounds like new information the way it was put. It was like, I have information, in other words, you know, separate information to perhaps some of what was alluded to by the Four Corners Program that sort of kicked this all off.
DEAN SMITH:
So, it is available, it’s absolutely available to Senator Cox to bring that before the committee, at a private meeting or a public hearing. But I just note also, and I think this was reported in The West Australian, that she did clarify those remarks as the hearing went on yesterday. Senator Cox is free to make her own statements and act in her own way as a Greens Senator for Western Australia. But I’m particularly keen to make sure that the matters that were drawn to our attention yesterday by the Reserve Bank of Australia, which gave evidence in camera, by AUSTRAC officials themselves, that we don’t lose sight that at the beginning of this inquiry, rather than as the former Premier remarked it being a storm in a teacup, I think it’s starting to look like the tip of an iceberg.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Alright. Well, just on that, you, you did have AUSTRAC officials in the room yesterday and the Australian Crime Commission, et cetera. Now, the AUSTRAC official that you had there, Mr Brown, he confirmed that the audit that was being done, through an independent source, but requested by AUSTRAC, has been finished.
DEAN SMITH:
It has, and you might remember that, in August 2022, AUSTRAC ordered an independent auditor be appointed to investigate compliance matters with Gold Corporation. That independent audit report was due within 180 days. At the Senate estimates hearing earlier in the year, I discovered that report had only been partially provided to AUSTRAC. An extension was provided and very, very curiously that final report was provided to AUSTRAC by the independent auditor on the evening of Friday the 21st of July. Late in the evening. So that is just one new bit of information, in addition to other information, that leads me to think, or just reconfirms my concerns, that there is more to see here than we are being told by Gold Corp and by the West Australian State Government. It was interesting in the evidence that the acting deputy CEO of AUSTRAC, so not a junior official, a very senior official, my conclusions from his remarks was that their interest in Gold Corp dates back to an audit report that Gold Corp did in August 2020. So rather than this being an inquiry about recent events, I think what we’ve seen in the evidence that AUSTRAC officials gave yesterday that there’s deeper considerations and deeper interest in this that we might first have realised. Next week, the committee will meet again and it will have a private meeting and publish some of the submissions that it has received. That’ll give West Australians and others who are taking an interest in this further insight into what has happened now.
GARY ADSHEAD:
So what you’re alluding to there, I think, was the AUSTRAC official talking about how their concern was around, and their worry was around some of Perth Mint’s customers, quote unquote, customers, and that that’s what sort of prompted this further audit being done independently of AUSTRAC. Does that worry you?
DEAN SMITH:
Well, what we’re focusing on here is that Australia has an important role to play in combating money laundering activities generally, and in evidence that we got from the Attorney General’s Department and others, it’s clear that Australia is falling behind in its international obligations. So here we have a significant transactor, bullion and, you know, gold bullion is a particularly important commodity. What we are narrowing down here is have those anti-money laundering compliance obligations been met by Gold Corp. If they haven’t been met, why haven’t they been met? And I think every West Australian, every listener to your program needs to be on high alert, because if AUSTRAC imposes financial penalties on Gold Corporation, that is a cost to the West Australian taxpayer, because Gold Corporation is owned by the West Australian State Government, because the board and the chairman report to a Minister of the State Government, West Australian taxpayers will be liable. Now, again, AUSTRAC couldn’t tell us when this investigation would conclude, so I think that’s another point of concern. They couldn’t tell us what might be the full scope of financial penalties if financial penalties are imposed. So, I suspect that this inquiry might need to go beyond its December reporting date.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Right, okay. And of course, during the hearing yesterday, I think it was Dorinda Cox, again, the Senator, who said that the Perth Mint and Gold Corp themselves have been self-reporting something like 5,000 potential breaches of anti-money laundering rules and regulations and laws. So, 5,000 and, of course, the potential there is a $21 million fine per breach. So that’s just staggering numbers.
DEAN SMITH:
Staggering is a word that I would use. But we’re not at that point. And I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate on what that number is. But we know in the recent past Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank were faced with financial penalties that range between $700 million and $1.3 billion worth. These are very, very serious matters. It will be interesting to hear from the Perth Mint when the inquiry comes to Western Australia and that decision’s not yet been made.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Is it not next week?
DEAN SMITH:
We’re having a private meeting next week. The Senate is sitting in Canberra for the next two weeks. So, our first obligation is to be in Canberra for the Senate sitting. And I don’t want to jump ahead of the committee. It’s important, as I said at the beginning, to maintain a strong spirit of bipartisanship because this is about Western Australia’s reputation domestically and internationally. These are not new issues to the West Australian State Government. The West Australian State Government Auditor General herself wrote a report, released in October 2022. We heard yesterday from AUSTRAC that they were engaged in regards to the report. And in that report she says on page one, that non-compliance without anti-money laundering obligations could result in significant reputational damage and financial consequences for the state.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Okay. So, you are saying that if you are here next week, it might be a private meeting, though it will not be an open meeting at this stage.
DEAN SMITH:
Yeah, there’ll definitely not be a public hearing, which is the term we use, there’ll definitely not be in a public hearing in Western Australia in the next two weeks.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Why?
DEAN SMITH:
Because the Federal Parliament is sitting.
GARY ADSHEAD:
No, what I mean is, when you question Perth Mint, would it be public or private?
DEAN SMITH:
Well, that’ll be a decision for the committee. But I can’t see why not.
GARY ADSHEAD:
Okay. Alright.
DEAN SMITH:
I can’t see why not.
GARY ADSHEAD:
We’ll wait and see. Senator Dean Smith, thanks for your time.
DEAN SMITH:
Thank you, Gary.
ENDS