HURST, Ms Jennifer, Acting Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Intelligence, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission SIREC, Ms Hilda, Deputy Commissioner, National Security Investigations, Australian Federal Police STEWART, Ms Raegan, Acting Assistant Commissioner, Crime, Australian Federal Police Committee met at 09:01 CHAIR ( Senator Polley ): I declare open this hearing of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement for its inquiry into combating crime as a service. I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here today. The committee will be conducting today's hearing in person and by videoconference. These are public proceedings being videostreamed live via the parliamentary website, and a Hansard transcript is being made. I remind all witnesses that, in giving evidence to the committee, they are protected by parliamentary privilege. It is unlawful for anyone to threaten or disadvantage a witness on account of evidence given to a committee, and such action may be treated by the parliament as a contempt. It is also a contempt to give false or misleading evidence. Witnesses also have the right to request to be heard in camera. If a witness objects to answering a question, they should state the ground on which they objection is made, and the committee will determine whether it will insist on an answer, having regard to the ground which is claimed. If the committee determines to insist on an answer, a witness may request that the answer be given in camera. Commonwealth officers appearing today are also reminded of the Senate order specifying the process by which a claim of public interest immunity should be raised. A copy of the order is available from the secretariat. The extract read as follows— Public interest immunity claims That the Senate— (a) notes that ministers and officers have continued to refuse to provide information to Senate committees without properly raising claims of public interest immunity as required by past resolutions of the Senate; (b) reaffirms the principles of past resolutions of the Senate by this order, to provide ministers and officers with guidance as to the proper process for raising public interest immunity claims and to consolidate those past resolutions of the Senate; (c) orders that the following operate as an order of continuing effect: (1) If: (a) a Senate committee, or a senator in the course of proceedings of a committee, requests information or a document from a Commonwealth department or agency; and (b) an officer of the department or agency to whom the request is directed believes that it may not be in the public interest to disclose the information or document to the committee, the officer shall state to the committee the ground on which the officer believes that it may not be in the public interest to disclose the information or document to the committee, and specify the harm to the public interest that could result from the disclosure of the information or document. (2) If, after receiving the officer's statement under paragraph (1), the committee or the senator requests the officer to refer the question of the disclosure of the information or document to a responsible minister, the officer shall refer that question to the minister. (3) If a minister, on a reference by an officer under paragraph (2), concludes that it would not be in the public interest to disclose the information or document to the committee, the minister shall provide to the committee a statement of the ground for that conclusion, specifying the harm to the public interest that could result from the disclosure of the information or document. (4) A minister, in a statement under paragraph (3), shall indicate whether the harm to the public interest that could result from the disclosure of the information or document to the committee could result only from the publication of the information or document by the committee, or could result, equally or in part, from the disclosure of the information or document to the committee as in camera evidence. (5) If, after considering a statement by a minister provided under paragraph (3), the committee concludes that the statement does not sufficiently justify the withholding of the information or document from the committee, the committee shall report the matter to the Senate. (6) A decision by a committee not to report a matter to the Senate under paragraph (5) does not prevent a senator from raising the matter in the Senate in accordance with other procedures of the Senate. (7) A statement that information or a document is not published, or is confidential, or consists of advice to, or internal deliberations of, government, in the absence of specification of the harm to the public interest that could result from the disclosure of the information or document, is not a statement that meets the requirements of paragraph (1) or (4). (8) If a minister concludes that a statement under paragraph (3) should more appropriately be made by the head of an agency, by reason of the independence of that agency from ministerial direction or control, the minister shall inform the committee of that conclusion and the reason for that conclusion, and shall refer the matter to the head of the agency, who shall then be required to provide a statement in accordance with paragraph (3). (d) requires the Procedure Committee to review the operation of this order and report to the Senate by 20 August 2009. (13 May 2009 J.1941) (Extract, Senate Standing Orders) CHAIR: I remind committee members of their obligations under the Behaviour Code for Australian Parliamentarians to treat witnesses with dignity, courtesy, fairness and respect. I now welcome officials from the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. The parliament has resolved that an officer of a department of the Commonwealth or of a state shall not be asked to give opinions on matters of policy and shall be given reasonable opportunity to refer questions asked of the officer to superior officers or to a minister. The resolution does not preclude questions asking for explanations of policies or factual questions about when and how policies were adopted. I understand that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses giving evidence to parliamentary committees has been provided to you. Do you have any comments to make on the capacity in which you appear? Ms Hurst : I'm the executive director for collection operations. CHAIR: If the AFP and ACIC would each like to make some opening comments, please do so, and at the conclusion of those comments we will go to questions from committee members. Ms Hurst : Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear today. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission is Australia's national criminal intelligence agency responsible for understanding and combating serious and organised crime impacting Australia and is the custodian of Australia's national police information systems and services. Our submission highlights the growing use of the crime-as-a-service model where serious and organised crime activity is broken into discrete tasks and outsourced to specialists, allowing serious and organised crime groups and others to access capabilities they do not hold themselves. By lowering barriers to entry and fragmenting activity across specialised actors, this model expands participation and enables offenders to distance themselves from direct involvement through intermediaries, complicating attribution and detection using conventional intelligence and law enforcement techniques. Further, serious and organised crime networks use technology to isolate control and conceal their operations, creating a criminal environment that is both resilient and adaptive. This evolving operating environment presents a significant and growing threat to Australia's safety and national security. We're happy to assist the committee with any questions. Ms Sirec : Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. Outsourcing elements of a criminal syndicate's activity is not a new concept. Throughout history, organised crime groups have outsourced parts of their operating model to launder money, to move illicit commodities, to encrypt their communications, to source weapons and to commit violent acts. What has changed is the speed, scale and methodology being used for outsourcing. Today, these capabilities are bought and sold like other commodities. Money laundering is a service. Encrypted communications is a service. Ransomware, stolen identities and violence are all available for a fee to anyone with the means to pay. This is what we mean by crime as a service, and its most dangerous feature is it collapses the barrier to entry. An offender no longer needs decades of criminal knowledge or a global network; they need a wallet and an internet connection. Anyone can now rent the same capabilities once reserved for the most sophisticated transnational serious and organised crime syndicates. Crime as a service operates across both online and physical environments. The model is also decentralised and fragmented, making attribution more difficult and complicating traditional law enforcement approaches. The AFP is alive to this threat and is already acting to disrupt and deter crime as a service. We have disrupted dedicated encrypted criminal platforms. We have stood up operations that target the money launderers, the offshore crime bosses, the trusted insiders within the border environment and technical specialists who sell their services throughout the criminal supply chain. We work with the ACIC, AUSTRAC, international partners, state and territory law enforcement partners and regional counterparts. In 2021, Operation Ironside dismantled the encrypted app AN0M. In 2025, Operation Kraken took down another dedicated criminal app, Ghost, which was built for one purpose—to let organised crime do business in secret. Around 700 of our members executed search warrants across four states for Operation Kraken, leading to over 50 charges, over $28 million in assets restrained, 29 weapons being seized and 241 kilograms of drugs being seized. It was the first time an Australian based person was accused of being the architect of such a global platform—one that the AFP, with our partners, was able to decrypt and read. We allege Ghost was used by organised crime groups to import drugs, launder money and order killings. In Australia alone, Operation Kraken allowed us to prevent around 50 threats to kill or seriously harm. Ghost was not a syndicate; it was a service sold to many syndicates at once. No single country can police the global nature of crime as a service alone, which is why Operation Kraken involved partners from around Australia, as well as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Europol. Similarly, in June 2025, Operation Artemis—a joint operation led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in partnership with the AFP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission—focused on dismantling an organised criminal network that was allegedly responsible for a wave of online sextortion crimes which targeted thousands of teenagers globally. The network's scheme would coerce victims into sharing sexually explicit images before threatening to distribute those images unless payment was made. During the operation, two AFP investigators deployed in Nigeria were able to trace online activity, link digital evidence to suspects and assist in the identification of both perpetrators and victims. This operation led to the arrest of 22 suspects in Nigeria. Another example is Operation Hilfield. In this operation, the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team charged three men in 2025 for their alleged role in setting fire to the Adass Israel Synagogue. It is alleged the men undertook the attack following alleged instruction from a state actor. The other frightening trend is the extension to violence as a service. In April 2025, under Operation Dedric, the AFP partnered with Danish police and the Swedish Police Authority and arrested a 15-year-old in Sydney who, we allege, used an encrypted application to try and recruit hitmen for contract killings in Denmark and Sweden—all on behalf of a transnational syndicate. As the matter is still before court, I won't go into further operational detail. The AFP will continue to use all our capability and strong partnerships to combat crime as a service. Within our organisation, teams work across functionality to identify and disrupt offending, including those who commit the criminal acts as well as those who set the criminal task. The scale and agility by which crime as a service is perpetrated is constantly evolving, but so is the AFP response. I now welcome any questions. CHAIR: Thank you very much for those comments. The deputy chair can start the questioning. Mr BATT: Thank you very much for your time. The submissions both mentioned legislative reform from both organisations, so I'll start there. The AFP identified gaps in the Criminal Code around criminal organisation offences. Can you give any examples of prosecutions that have failed or weren't pursued, because of those gaps, and what are you looking for in terms of support in that area? Ms Sirec : In regard to the criminal association offences, we identified that for our prosecution to succeed we've got to prove beyond reasonable doubt—to make the criminal organisation offences made. That's often quite challenging for prosecutions, in particular, when crime as a service is quite fragmented. As we see, there are a lot of cut-outs that can occur. Individuals that perpetrate certain crimes—say, for an arson, a cybercrime or a ransomware offence—may not know that they are doing this on behalf of a broader criminal organisation. So our observation is that being able to keep pace with ensuring that criminal association offences are more aligned to even those individuals that are in the cut-out would be advantageous for us. I don't have other specific examples, but you can probably draw the connection to—for instance, in Operation Hilfield, we have successfully arrested those individuals that have committed the arsons themselves, but the director-general of ASIO, in 2025, indicated that it's highly likely that the motivation for those attacks that occurred at the Adass Israel Synagogue was state sponsored. For us to then link the individual that committed that attack all the way up to the state sponsored actors is quite challenging, so having legislation that enables us to be able to pick up all of those individuals will certainly act as a strong deterrent, in particular, for those individuals that might think twice. If they get a message on an encrypted app to undertake a certain act, we need the deterrent measures in place for them to think this might be involved in something more broad in criminality; therefore, they won't perpetrate. Mr BATT: Is the process of trying to get that legislation in place easy enough to do if you know where the shortfalls are to push them through, or is it difficult? Ms Sirec : We'd certainly work with the legislators and the Attorney-General's Department to ensure that we've got those practical examples and work through how it would occur in practice. We engage with the Attorney-General's Department regularly on that and we have a legislative reform team that will work with our investigators and across partners to make sure it's fit for purpose. So, certainly, we have some insights into where we think we could assist. Mr BATT: How would the proposed regulating of SIM boxes before they're used criminally work, how do we do it without capturing legitimate uses, and how would we enforce that? Ms Sirec : I think there's an opportunity to look at the regulations around importation and possession of the SIM boxes. We see that there are generally legitimate uses as well, but, across the spectrum, as we know, criminal groups will often use legitimate products for nefarious means. So our challenge would be to investigate the nefarious use and nature of it. But there's certainly an opportunity there, in particular, around the legitimate import of some of these products and regulating their appropriate use. Mr BATT: Okay. Ms Hurst, how effective are the current tools against encrypted comms used by the serious and organised crime networks? Ms Hurst : To pick up a point from Deputy Commissioner Sirec in relation to some of the legislation and some of the challenges, as a general statement, what I would say is the pace of technology is outpacing the legislative frameworks that we have because they are moving so quickly and they are so adept in relation to some of the technologies. There are off-the-shelf technologies that are being used by serious and organised crime networks, and obviously encrypted communications present a significant challenge for all agencies involved in the fight against organised crime. Mr BATT: How does Australia's electronic surveillance capability compare to other nations, and are there any critical gaps that you're aware of? Ms Hurst : I'm not across that one. I'm sorry, Senator. I'd probably have to defer to the department in relation to that. Mr BATT: That's alright. Ms Sirec : From the AFP's perspective, in terms of comparing against other countries, I'd have to take that one specifically on notice. But I do know, particularly from our perspective, the SLAID legislation and our adoption of various surveillance device legislation and TI legislation is quite well progressed. But I think where we see opportunities is in enhancing the tech neutrality within the legislation, in particular, as it relates to technology that gets quickly used for our requirements in terms of surveillance or interception. Identifying the neutrality around that would be a reform that we see as an opportunity to modernise the legislation, as was already provided in evidence in terms of meeting the evolution of the technology. Mr BATT: You mentioned the tech neutral electronic surveillance framework. What does that look like in practice? Ms Sirec : At the moment, we have specific requirements to reach thresholds for using technology for a surveillance device, which would be either tracking or being able to provide some—and I won't go into it too much, as you would appreciate—covert opportunities versus, for instance, telephone intercepts. Certainly, the telephone intercept legislation is really predicated around the telco communications that occur. With encrypted apps and leveraging online internet engagement, particularly around gaming or individuals providing text messages through various online platforms across the gaming environment, we know that there are opportunities to streamline that so that, when we are utilising our powers, we don't have to be as specific, as to whether it's an intercept or for surveillance observations. Mr BATT: In the submission from ACIC, it talks about 'professional facilitators' being 'lawyers, accountants, migration agents, real estate agents, customs brokers'. Do you have any idea of the scale of that and whether or not they're acting wittingly versus unwittingly? Are there any stats? Ms Hurst : I think that some are covering both things. They're either unwittingly involved or they are actively involved. Without question, serious organised crime infiltrates all of those areas. The scale of this has only ever increased in relation to their infiltration. They're even putting their own organised crime figures and networks within those particular environments as well. That trusted threat environment that we're currently seeing is only escalating in relation to people who are being placed into those particular areas. The threat is increasing because of the opportunistic nature of organised crime and how it looks for that opportunity to actually place itself within those particular areas that you've outlined to make their business model a little bit more effective and a little bit easier, particularly when we're looking at money laundering and how they're moving money. Mr BATT: I'll leave it at that for a while. CHAIR: I will continue where you left off. We know that, in particular around money laundering, all of those professions have been identified. Do you or the AFP have relationships with the governing bodies of those professions, in terms of ensuring that those who are being unwittingly involved are educated to look out for who these people are and to ask some basic questions? Ms Hurst : In the ACIC, we are certainly involved with that particular sector and in providing them as much information as we can to make them aware of what the threat is. It's not only education; it's providing them our own assessments in relation to various aspects within that particular agency, whether it's a regulatory body or an oversight body, and how that might work and the information they need to actually provide them with some detailed information and intelligence. Ms Sirec : Equally, from the AFP's perspective, we're engaged with, for instance, the financial sector and banking. We have a number of memorandums of understanding with the big banks to work through that. We engage with our state and territory partners, particularly in terms of other vulnerable sectors, whether that's real estate or other asset providers as well. We also have quite a mature understanding of the tranche 2 legislation under the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation, particularly around the onus on some of these additional sectors, such as lawyers, accountants and real estate agents, in terms of their obligations. We're particularly working with AUSTRAC on that. We're also working across the tech industry and trying to encourage them to have a little bit more understanding about their customer base and the individuals who are operating across their platforms. The advent of international production orders has also been quite useful for us in being able to speed up requests. We acknowledge that a lot of the platforms that are being used through crime as a service are housed in offshore nations, particularly in the United States. Having that international production order regime really maximised is giving us very quick information so that we can provide an effect and really target the individuals that are causing harm. CHAIR: I hope I'm correct here, but I know from memory that before the money laundering legislation was brought in—the fact now is confiscation of assets from criminals. Ireland was ahead of us in some of these areas, and we've had evidence given to us about the UK and some other elements being ahead of us. From your perspectives from both your organisations, are we now ahead of the game or is there still scope for us to do more in terms of a legislative agenda going forward? Ms Sirec : I'm happy to start off. With the tranche 2 legislation coming in, it's really elevating us to world standards. Being ahead of the game might be quite a subjective view, depending on the way countries assess the strength of some of their legislation. But from my perspective, I'm pretty much an optimist. I think we've maximised our opportunities, particularly around the confiscation of assets. The AFP set a very bold target a number of years ago in terms of forfeiting assets and restraints, and we've far exceeded that, Since we brought in the criminal assets confiscation architecture, we've seized over $2 billion across the asset streams. That means money and assets away from criminal organisations where they can't reinvest that for more criminal activities. Working through some of the government investments that we've had, particularly around partnering with states and territories—for instance, across the illicit tobacco and taking the profit out of that—working with our state and territory partners has again proven quite useful and we've been able to already restrain assets more than the investment that has been made in. So I think we're really leveraging and maximising the legislation to its full extent. CHAIR: That's good. I think it'd be fair to say from the community's point of view that there tends to be a judgement on how successful law enforcement is in combating organised crime, in whatever form, based on how many arrests, how many people or how many tonnes of drugs are seized. Could you talk through how the AFP have come to the realisation of how important and beneficial the disruption of organised crime is? In terms of your opening comments, when you were going through all the different operations—Kraken, for instance—I don't think the public actually understand the number of lives that were saved in that one operation in terms of how many drugs are stopped from coming in. It's hard to put a figure on that, but I think there needs to be a greater understanding from the community to bring them along to understand that this investment is paying off. Ms Sirec : It's a very good point. Yes, prosecutions and convictions are one measure of success. Sometimes the hardest thing is to acknowledge the absence of crime being a success factor. Crime prevention is really difficult to be able to acknowledge. But you're right; interventions and disruptions are really important. I think there's opportunity for us to continue to reinforce when a disruption occurs and that we promulgate that message, particularly, as you acknowledged, through Operation Kraken. Preventing 50 lives being lost is not insignificant. It's quite an important factor and acknowledgement rather than just the arrests and the seizures that we've had. For instance, Operation Ironside itself also, through the Phantom Secure network, provided some really good outcomes, but what was probably lost in it was more than 14,000 Phantom Secure devices that just existed in Australia, not to mention how many thousands globally. As we targeted and stopped those with our partners, criminals lost 14,000 other opportunities to perpetuate their crimes through those means. Making sure that we are able to promote and give an understanding to the community about the disruptions is another critical factor, for sure. Ms Hurst : If I may add to a couple of points, we shouldn't underestimate the cost of serious organised crime and, obviously, as you've indicated, its impact on communities. When we look at the figures for 2022-23 alone, $68.7 billion was the cost of serious and organised crime within Australia. What we're seeing now is that some of these networks are incredibly complicated, intense and offshore. A lot of our very key organised crime figures are now operating offshore. It is incredibly important that we have working partnerships with our law enforcement colleagues across the board—Commonwealth, state and territory. As you rightly indicated, the disruptions are probably as important as the arrests because when we start to disrupt a network it then has to start to rebuild. From a financial perspective, we're working incredibly closely together with all of our partners, offshore and onshore, to go after and chase the money and break down the funding that it is utilising to support its business model. It's a collective effort. CHAIR: Thank you for that. The submission from ACIC outlines a network that is using the internet with nearly a million active users, facilitating $38.7 billion in illicit transactions. Was this network disrupted? If so, was it replaced with another? How quickly was that re-established? How many similar other networks are operating at that level currently? Ms Hurst : That one was disrupted, but it was quickly replaced, as we know. As soon as we start to take down a particular network, it's easily replaced. The scale of what we're talking about is probably something that's quite challenging to put an actual figure to, but it is escalating. These networks are escalating; the violence and the threats associated with the criminal networks are all escalating. If I go on a little bit to what our assessment is, particularly around crime as a service—and we haven't yet touched on violence as a service, which is a subset. CHAIR: We're getting there. Ms Hurst : Perfect. Maybe we'll cut into that very shortly. One of our assessments at the moment, which talks about the networks particularly involved in crime as a service, says that it's highly likely they're expanding in Australia, without any doubt. As Deputy Commissioner Sirec pointed out, this is not new and it's certainly not emerging. It's a business model related to SOC. The risk to the public is absolutely getting increasingly high. Social media encrypted messaging applications are also key drivers in relation to how this business model is allowed to operate. CHAIR: In your submission, you also note that a child abuse material marketplace turned over more than US$1 million annually. What was the outcome of this case, and how many such marketplaces do we know are currently in operation? Ms Hurst : I might have to take that on notice in relation to the outcome only because it would have involved law enforcement activity and I wouldn't like to speak— CHAIR: That's fine. Ms Hurst : I'll take that one on notice, if you don't mind. CHAIR: That's great. In terms of the AFP, I know the wonderful work that's been done around protecting children from being exploited, but what's your experience? We on the committee understand the close international relationships that the AFP have. Wherever I've travelled on any delegation, I always try and get a plug in to talk to the government of the day around cybersecurity, child exploitation and money laundering. Australia is seen to be very good. In some areas, they look to us because we've taken leadership in them. We can see that with the banning of under-16s from accessing social media, so we are innovative. I just want to get on record your experience with these marketplaces that are selling this disgusting material and exploiting these children. How much money is being generated, if there are some operating here in Australia? Ms Sirec : Our experience, particularly with the concerning trend in involving youth across crime as a service, particularly around the exploitation—we see youth are increasingly being groomed into these environments, whether it's for them to be victimised or turning them into offenders. Across the victimisation part, we see sextortion, we see individuals being asked for explicit images and we see the trading of child abuse material that's occurring. That is a pervasive and heinous testament to our whole environment in terms of being able to abuse children in that way. Through the great work of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation and our international collaborations, particularly through the Virtual Global Taskforce, you're right to point out that we are pretty world leading in that sense—particularly around the social media bans and also the work of the eSafety Commissioner, which has been really amplified through the Online Safety Act that we have in all efforts to protect children. On the other side, in terms of turning vulnerable youth into offenders, we see that criminal groups will see the opportunity to groom these youths because they're low-risk participants. The recruitment is very easy: it's done through social media, which they're always connected to, gaming, online communications. I've given evidence in the past in regard to sadistic online exploitation—turning this environment into gamification and creating notoriety in encouraging youth to do something quite drastic. It's desensitising them to the crime and allowing them an avenue to then go out and compete with one another for that extra notoriety. And I think the youth aren't fully appreciating the consequences or their involvement in the broader criminal and nefarious nature of organised crime, so they become unwitting participants in some of this. Unfortunately, they are also being leveraged to do various taskings, whether it's money muling, data theft, fraud, property damage, violence or stealing other property. The spectrum of things that youth are being groomed into and being exploited to do, both as victims and as offenders, is an alarming trend. CHAIR: Would it be fair to say that there are those young people who are disengaged and more vulnerable to going into chat rooms, which makes all of this so much easier—being able to access and groom young people—but that there is a role in this for the community and for parents to be aware of the activities their young people are actually active in when it comes to social media? Obviously, I believe they have a role, but I also believe that social media platforms, who are all making a lot of money out of this, have a responsibility as good corporate citizens but still have not, in the main, accepted that responsibility. I wonder if both organisations have any comments in those areas. Ms Sirec : I'm happy to start, and, certainly, all those observations are extremely valid. I think, when we talk about youth, it's not just one agency or one part of the system that is there to protect them; it needs to be a whole-systems approach. There are so many facets to this. In our experience, when we've come across youths that have either been victimised or been offenders, protective factors have been lacking in some of that. Whether it's been the schooling, education, peer group or parents and carers, there've sometimes been intervention points earlier upstream that could have prevented them from being exploited. Education and awareness across community groups and industry is critical. We've spoken in the past about things like ThinkUKnow, the program that really helps enhance online safety—about having those really open and clear conversations with children about their online habits and what they're doing. Importantly, that's also removing the stigma that children might feel in regard to being in a chat group, maybe starting to interact with it a little bit, and then realising that something bad has happened or they're starting to be extorted for money or actions because they've gone a little bit too far. Making sure that we can have those honest, open conversations without punitive actions really early is a clear intervention point so that children feel comfortable enough to come forward. We also need parents and carers to have the courage to have the tough conversations with their children and really be aware of what they're doing online. We've said a lot of times—and a lot of people have said this before—we wouldn't let children roam the streets and cross the road without looking left and right and holding their hands; why aren't we doing that online as well? Ms Hurst : I couldn't agree any more with the comments that have just been made by Deputy Commissioner Sirec. I would simply say there are responsibilities across every aspect, whether it be schools, community or the online platforms, like you've indicated, as well. At every aspect, if we're able to have an intervention and stop a young person from being involved in these types of things—being exploited or being used to undertake these types of activities—then wherever we can we need to make sure that we have those trigger points, across all of those areas that we've just spoken about, that might actually save a young person from doing something that they shouldn't. CHAIR: On encryption, we on this committee have had a number of inquiries calling on social media platforms, trying to get them to come and be witnesses. They wouldn't come before the committee. How much is encryption really impacting law enforcement's ability to, at the very least, intercept earlier in some of these illegal activities? Ms Hurst : I might start. As a general aspect, from an intelligence perspective, this is increasingly challenging for us and, I would say, for all agencies involved, whether it be law enforcement or intelligence agencies, across the board. We're trying to keep pace with encrypted apps and also trying to keep pace with and get on top of the content available to them, because they're operating in the dark and we are also operating in the dark. We're just struggling and finding it a challenge to identify and get across some of the encrypted apps. They are increasing with pace. That becomes a challenge, as well, to make sure that we are across what is being used and how we can actually do something about that. Ms Sirec : I very much agree with that. I'll say that encryption is very important for our day-to-day lives, as well. In banking and in our personal lives we rely on encryption. It's an important factor of keeping ourselves and our communities safe, but increasingly the nefarious use of encryption is where the challenge is. It's anonymising individuals in the actions that they do. It's fragmenting the ability to gain access to different communications. We've seen examples where individuals will use one particular encryption app to send a message and then reply on a separate encryption app. It's like creating their own code. They're almost amplifying the utility of encryption to obfuscate some of their activities going forward. That's coupled with the fact that encryption is moving people away from the dark web and the clearnet—the spaces that we want to be safe and that we use for our important daily lives—is increasingly being used for nefarious purposes. That is a grapple for us. We're certainly working with tech and industry to make sure that there are opportunities for us to work with them every early. For them to identify trends and indicators about where they think nefarious activities are happening and then come forward is, I think, the key for us to be able to work through these challenges. CHAIR: When it comes to foreign actors and their activities into Australia or those within Australia who are foreign actors, I think there is a lack of understanding in the community about their behaviour and why foreign actors are interested in Australia anyway. Dare I say I've experienced being overseas on delegations where some parliamentarians didn't actually take it as seriously as it should be taken, with the briefings you get before you leave. What more can we do to get that understanding? That also goes to the general public's lack of understanding of why a government invests in foreign nations and supports our neighbours in the Pacific. Can you please explain the impact of foreign actors from both perspectives. Is it time to get that message out to Australians as to why this is happening? Ms Sirec : My perspective is that Australia is such a wonderful democratic country and we have a lot of exceptional freedoms and a lot of connection across a wide multicultural environment. I would suggest that the freedoms that we enjoy and should continue to enjoy are probably the envy of some of the other countries out there. Our perspective on foreign actors is that their influence across Australia would be in terms of either creating social incohesion, trying to gain advantage for their own purposes or impacting some of the various diaspora that exist here in Australia. Social cohesion is incredibly important for us to maintain, particularly in the context of maintaining our democracy and way of life and ensuring our economic prosperity so that Australia remains the best country in the world. Getting that message out means ensuring that everyone that works across government, law enforcement and community realises that individually we all might have information or insights that might be of interest to another country, holds that to ourselves and makes sure that no-one out there is able to go into some of those vulnerable spaces that might exist. Our message to individuals would be that, if they receive a text message or a link or something like that and it doesn't feel right, it's probably not right. Make a report. There are various areas where we can make reports. There's CyberWatch. There are report crime areas. The states and territories will receive reports as well. And we will make sure that we have that cross-government and cross-agency view of that to thwart the threats that foreign state actors might want to pose to Australia. Ms Hurst : Reinforcing that message, as well, we are, of course, concerned about foreign state actors and their influence here in Australia for various purposes, certainly in relation to disruption around our own social cohesion and Australia's way of life. It's incredibly important across all agencies that we are supporting our nearest partners in the Pacific and building their capabilities and support in relation to that. I think collectively that is where we're starting to build a little bit of resilience in relation to protecting Australia, its way of life and its democracy. That's around not only supporting what's happening in Australia but also supporting our nearest neighbours in building their capability and strength in relation to the influence of foreign actors. CHAIR: I think there's also an important element for community and particularly young people to understand: if they are attracted to or become involved in, for example, money laundering—we know that youths have been used in that area—law enforcement is not really looking to prosecute some vulnerable person that's used their bank account to launder money. Do you want to talk us through how AFP goes about that and the need for young people to feel that they can come forward without any fear of being prosecuted? Can you walk the committee through your experience there. Ms Sirec : Absolutely. Our preference is always to intervene early and disrupt and make sure that youths don't get into the criminal justice system. We know that if we can intervene early we have that ability to make sure that youth don't end up being organised criminals of the future. There's a lot of work that we do with states and territories in terms of diversionary programs. For example, some of the really drastic sorts of crimes that youth can get involved in, particularly around terrorism and access to violent, extremist material and the like, we've had more than 50 youths being investigated for counterterrorism, and easily half of those have been disrupted due to early intervention rather than enter into the prosecution pathway. If we look at that at its height and everywhere else in between, even the sextortion work that has been done through Operation Huntsman, we've encouraged individuals to come forward even if they feel like they might have done something wrong online. For them to come forward, we've made those assurances that they won't be prosecuted, that they didn't do anything wrong. Giving them the confidence to know that they haven't done something wrong, particularly when they're being groomed and exploited, is a key message that we really want to get out there through our partners, but also through parents, carers and schools. CHAIR: Thank you for that. That leads on to my two final questions. For the more serious crimes that young people are now being coerced into or engaged with for online, is our youth justice system an adequate framework to deal with the very serious issues and crimes that are currently being perpetrated by youth? Ms Sirec : I won't make comment on other agencies and youth justice across the states and territories, but what I'll say is that we work really closely with state and territory police who, equally, work very closely with youth justice. We also have mechanisms working with various youth justice through the organised crime architecture to make sure that we are working in complement with them. As soon as we know that children become part of the justice system, we know that we need to work closely across all community groups to get them off them and to rehabilitate them as well. We will play our role in that. But, like anything, particularly in organised crime and the crime environment, there's always more work to be done, and we welcome the opportunity to do more that has been recommended. CHAIR: Finally, this inquiry is to shine a light on criminality in the service industry, and, if you're looking, for instance, at cryptocurrency to be able to understand that and to be able to investigate that and even to be able to use that in a criminal act, you need people with some expertise. This is both agencies' opportunity to put forward whether or not there is any area where the government can act to ensure that law enforcement have the capacity to deal with this issue. Ms Sirec : More broadly, I'll say that ongoing investment in the breadth of capabilities is really important and always vital. The pace of technology and the advent of artificial intelligence, for instance, is turning what used to be very skilled and sophisticated requirements into something that's easily accessible. AI, for instance, can upskill individuals that have low skill, particularly in relation to cryptocurrencies and other structuring of finance processes that occur. We do a lot of training with our partners in the AFP, particularly around cryptocurrency, cybercrime and digital proficiency. We are also expanding our notion of what an investigation team looks like. It's no longer only the detective that is out there. We need specialist skills. We need unsworn professionals that have those really keen digital skill sets. We're creating multidisciplinary teams. We're engaging more with tech and industry to make sure that they can be a force multiplier for our technical expertise. We need to continue, advance, accelerate and amplify that. CHAIR: What's the ACIC point of view? Ms Hurst : To go a little bit further in relation to that, I think what we're seeing, across the board for all agencies involved in this, is that capability gap, particularly around things like blockchain forensics, advanced analytics and cyber investigation skills—most definitely. We're seeing a rapid adoption now of encryption, the digital currencies, and we haven't touched on AI enabled tools. All of this is presenting our agencies with challenges and, certainly, capability gaps: to keep the people that are involved with our agencies but also bring others into our environment—people who are involved in industry, who understand some of these things a lot better than what we do and who have some significant tools that they can bring to bear in relation to some of these challenges. And this is where it's so incredibly important that we're working as a collective of agencies—not only Commonwealth and state but with the private sector as well. CHAIR: Thank you for those comments. Can I just encourage both organisations. If there's more that you want to address—particularly around AI, having read other submissions—that would be very welcome. We'd like that by 3 July. I will now hand over to Mr Batt, the deputy chair. Mr BATT: You both mentioned crypto—we haven't really gone much into that this morning—and there are submissions from both organisations on that. AFP, you note that overseas virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, do not readily respond to Australian law enforcement requests. Are there any mechanisms you're seeking to address that? Are there any ways forward for that? Ms Sirec : Certainly. Strengthening our international partnerships across the board, through supercharging our global operations, is one way that we're addressing that. There's trying to use the leverage points of the international production orders as well. That's another mechanism which we've been able to evolve since our submission. But that ongoing representation that we make to the countries about, particularly, our insights—a lot of our organised criminality doesn't observe borders and a lot of our key organised crime figures are now increasingly offshore—is about making sure that our law enforcement partners in offshore countries are aware of this and really giving them insights by saying, 'Well, if they're committing crimes here in Australia, what do you think they're committing within the countries that they are operating out of?' So creating that shared understanding—and also burden sharing—is going to be key. Incrementally, we'll be able to get a little bit more work done in that space. Mr BATT: Ms Hurst, you mentioned that more funding in cryptocurrency support would be good. Again, ACIC identified that crypto is a key enabler in crimes of service. How effective are your current tools against cryptocurrency being used by criminal networks? Does the ACIC have adequate analytical capability to trace those transactions now, or is further support required? Ms Hurst : It's a developing capability, but we are working very closely with the AFP and also with our state and territory colleagues in relation to that. It's a skill that we need to develop and enhance within the agency. We have a significant ability around our analytical tools at the moment, and, certainly, with the new legislation proposed for the ACIC—which is very much focused on intelligence collection, focusing more upstream in relation to what's happening—we are very hopeful that this will actually enhance our abilities and our capabilities around this. But, certainly, from an analytical perspective, we are well serviced in relation to that. Could we do with more? Absolutely—we certainly could. We're just seeing such a growing demand, from an ACIC perspective—our agencies, our partners and the people that we work with at the moment from various agencies. They're looking to the ACIC for that intelligence support and those insights that we bring that are able then to cause, affect or enhance some of the disruption activities being undertaken by our law enforcement partners. We are doing that on a regular basis. Yes, we would absolutely welcome more enhancement in that analytical area. CHAIR: Thank you very much for your submission and for giving us your time today. Thank you, officers, for the work that you do each and every day. I hope we can get some good messages out to the community about what they can do to help fight organised crime as well. We've just received the AFP's statement. We will table that for the committee..