AUSTRAC is committed to upholding a culture that promotes and ensures the safety and wellbeing of children and young people. In supporting child safety, AUSTRAC complies with the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework (the Framework) and upholds children’s rights.

As Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regulator and financial intelligence unit (FIU), AUSTRAC is responsible for detecting, deterring, and disrupting criminal abuse of the Australian financial system to protect the Australian community from serious and organised crime.

We regulate more than 17,000 individuals, businesses and organisations to ensure they have robust AML/CTF processes and systems in place and can effectively identify and mitigate the risks associated with criminal exploitation of the financial system. We analyse and generate actionable financial intelligence for our partners, based on industry reporting. Our intelligence is invaluable to achieving law enforcement outcomes, including counter-child exploitation and counter-child abuse efforts.

AUSTRAC has a suite of sophisticated financial profiles and enhanced data capabilities to detect entities of interest, patterns of behaviour and transactions that may be indicative of these serious crimes. In May 2021, it was announced that AUSTRAC would receive additional funding under the National Strategy to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse. This funding has further bolstered AUSTRAC’s capability to help identify and disrupt payments linked to child exploitation, prevent and disrupt livestreamed child sexual abuse, intercept material and offenders at the border, and enhance our ability to identify possible offending within the community.

In undertaking the agency’s work, AUSTRAC officers do not have any direct interaction with children, therefore the overall risk is assessed as Low.

AUSTRAC continues to conduct suitability assessments and at a minimum, Baseline security clearances, for all prospective staff. This includes criminal history checks through the National Police Checking Service. The aim of these checks is to preventatively mitigate against personnel assessed as unsuitable due to security risks being engaged by the agency. A security risk includes any identified actual or potential risk to children.