Casey Costello: Customs Minister on the new reports encouraging the Government to crack down on cash

The Customs Minister says using cash can help hide exploitation. 

A Ministerial Advisory Group has released its second report - criticising our response to modern crime and money laundering. 

It shows cash and assets seized by police total just 4.2 percent of the $1.6 billion criminals make each year. 

Casey Costello says cash payments also aren't good for workers. 

"In terms of protection of workers and assuring that deductions are being done properly and pay is being managed properly and that they are getting all their entitlements - the cash process makes it very difficult concerning those things."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon. The government's been advised to crack down on
cash if it wants to crack down on organized crime.
This is a huge problem organized crime. There's an estimated
one point six billion dollars in criminal profits and just
four percent is currently being seized by the police. Now,
Casey Castello is the Customers Minister and also the Associate
Minister of Police and with us. Now, hey Casey, Hi, Heather,
how are you well? Thank you. So what they're what

(00:21):
they're saying you should do is you should ban cash
wages and high risk industries. Can you do that?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah? So this is and this is the part that
is it's about every mechanism that we can do to
target cash and if we can take away the money,
we can actually make them in roads. And so this
is a whole bunch of recommendations about what we can
do and pivot. So there are and this is an
area I was working in in terms of labor exploitation.
You know, the payment in cash is a right, but

(00:51):
the fact is that this is the sectors that are
most impacted by exploitation are the ones that we are
thinking that you should be able to look at some
exemptions to protect that because the legitimate nature of business
means that cash is an easy way to avoid detection.
And this is the stuff. It's a series of recommendations

(01:12):
which I think I've told them to be bold, to
think of everything we can do to move faster and
stronger and more decisively to make an impact. And these
are the recommendations they've come up with, and I think
they're doing great well.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I mean, is that practical to actually say, hey, you
work in construction or you work in hospital, you can't
have your wages in cash?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Well, I think this is the part where you start
looking at legitimately, where do people want to be paid cash?
Like this is you know, we're not talking about you know,
the majority when we used to start working, we've got
little branding bloats with cash in it. Most people are
operating in bank accounts. And so this is the stuff
that I'm really interested to look at in terms of

(01:53):
protection of workers and assuring that deductions are being done
properly and pay is being managed properly, and that they
are getting all the entitlements. The cash process makes it
very difficult to confirm those things. And I've done those investigations.
I know that that is a real issue in terms
of tracking that vulnerable people are getting what they should get.

(02:15):
And if this is leading into making illegismate businesses high
accountability and hide cash and high profits, then I think
we should be looking at it.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Okay, interesting Should police have the ability to watch someone's
bank transactions for thirty days, for more than one day
at a time.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
The point point in that space is really looking at
at the moment, we have the ability to take effectively
search warrants to search a bank account retrospectively. But that
account is now it's one that we're interested in, and
so each day the police are putting another warranton each
day to look at it. And so therefore it's just

(02:56):
about these very strong grounds as to why you are
able to look at that bank account in the first place.
There's very strong search grounds that you are able to
get that warrant. What we're saying is rather than have
that we've established the grounds, rather than have a warrant
every day to look at it, maybe that we have
some ability to say, look, we've now established the grounds

(03:19):
why this bank account is suspicious and to be able
to monitor that for a period of time. Because the
money moves so fast. By the time we have this
order in place, we've lost the money. It's gone and
it's generally leaving New Zealand. And that's what we're trying
to do is look at all of the things that
we can make it as hard as possible for them

(03:41):
to do business. And it's like, just as we harden
our borders, we're trying to harden our financial borders as well.
And that's whether it's scamming, whether it's drugs. You know,
we've seen it in terms of how much money is
being circulated. So this is about all the things we
can do to make it as hard as difficult and

(04:03):
as unattractive to do business and our shores.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, Casey, thanks very much, appreciate, Casey Costello. Customers Minister
also Associate Police Minister.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
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Speaker 1 (04:13):
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