Who's the Legislator Anyway? How the Fatf's Global Norms Reshape Australian Counter Terrorist Financing Laws

Abstract

This article focuses on the Australian implementation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations, so-called ‘soft law’ instruments, which represent the international standards in Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF) but which force legislators to conform. The article will fill the gaps existing in the literature today by focusing on the origins and motives of broad CTF legislation in Australia, then detailing each of the FATF's CTF Recommendations and the ways in which they are implemented in Australia. This approach differs significantly from other literature in the field, which deals solely with Australian implementation of one of the FATF's components. The current paper's examination will reveal the CTF regime in Australia, a decade after the FATF's first CTF Mutual Evaluation Report on Australia, and its decisive influence.