Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the most common forms of scams—which has been brought to my attention in my electorate office, and I'm sure many other members are getting the same queries—is Australia's invoice scams, which are taking place at the moment around the country. According to the ACCC, Australian businesses lost $227 million to payment redirection scams in 2021, an increase of 77 per cent. Invoice scams are where people intercept, through cybercrime, an invoice, change the banking account and send it off—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:10 to 10:22

As I was saying previously, the most common form of scam in Australia is these invoice scams where a cybercriminal intercepts your emails—it could be an invoice that's going out to a client or a customer—and they change the banking number. The customer, unbeknown to them, receives the invoice and pays the bill but into the scammer's account. This is happening more often. This could be fixed quite easily if banks were willing to by checking the business name with the bank details. It's mandated in the UK and in most of Europe. I'm calling on the banks here to do whatever they can to stop this scamming that's been taking place, costing Australians $227 million in redirection scams in 2021. These scammers impersonate business, and it is disgraceful that people are losing money.

These are hardworking Australians, mainly tradies, I've noticed—plumbers, electricians, builders et cetera. For example, a constituent who contacted me last week, a plasterer by trade, recently sent an invoice to a builder which he believed went unpaid. He queried with the builder and was told that the invoice had in fact been paid. My constituent never received the payment, even though the builder provided evidence of the emails received. It turns out that my constituent's emails had been hacked and the invoices amended with a new bank account, leaving my constituent considerably out of pocket. Neither the bank nor the builder feels any responsibility for what has happened. Banks should be able to put this in place. They should be able to simply check the account details using the name or the business name, and that could fix it. I've written to the Assistant Treasurer asking that he look into this to see what can be done for my constituent. The easiest way to fix this is for banks to do the right thing and do a simple check—as is done in the UK and most European countries—to ensure that these scams do not take place. It is so easy to fix. We're calling on the banks to do this voluntarily. But I have written to the Assistant Treasurer asking that he investigate and see what he can do. Too much money is being lost to hardworking Australians that don't deserve this.

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