David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this motion on scams. What we are seeing with the scams, unfortunately, is an escalation, where they get more and more sophisticated over time. The technology, frankly, gets better and better, which enables them to pursue more scams and exploit them more effectively. Importantly, scams are migrating increasingly from the text based mobile phone world to the broader digital and social media world. I want to come back to that in a minute because, unfortunately, the government has not acted in that important area.

Back in December 2020, our government introduced an important industry code, a reducing scam calls code, and, under the code, telcos that breached those rules would be fined up to $250,000 on each occasion. There was very, very clear evidence that it worked because in the first 12 months of that new code, 357 million scam calls were blocked and that's a very good thing. In November 2021, we introduced a regulatory amendment to empower the telco sector to block SMS scams at source and, happily, the new government took that up and it was implemented on 1 July last year.

As the ACCC has correctly noted, the true cost of scams is more than a dollar figure because they cause emotional distress to victims, their families and their businesses. We pretty much all have either been the victim of a scam or know someone who has. Unfortunately, it is often older people, who perhaps are not as familiar with technology and who take at face value some of those texts messages and calls that sometimes come along. We've all experienced it and it is a horrible thing, so measures to reduce the incidence of scams are welcome. We certainly have no quibble with the government taking strong steps in this area. We absolutely support that. But there is an important gap in what the government is not doing at the moment as it pertains to scams and this relates to something the ACCC has been calling for in its digital platforms inquiry. The first publication was November last year and there was a six-monthly update a few weeks ago.

The ACCC is particularly focused on broadening the scope of the regulation of scams, not just in the telco world but in the broader digital world as well. So what the ACCC has asked the government to do is to introduce mandatory processes to prevent and remove scams, harmful apps and fake reviews; to establish mandatory internal dispute resolution standards that ensure accessibility, timeliness, accountability, the ability to escalate to a human representative and transparency; and to ensure consumers and small businesses have access to an independent external digital ombudsman scheme.

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, who already exists and regulates the telco sector, put their hand up and said: 'We can do this. We can be the digital ombudsman for scams in a digital world.' On the face of it that would seem very sensible, with the already active telecommunications ombudsman doing precisely this in the telco world. But what about the digital world? What about the scams on Facebook? What about the scams on TikTok, Instagram or any of those platforms? They are currently not captured by these rules, so the government needs to do that.

It's now been six or seven months since the ACCC made this recommendation. Time is of the essence because every day we see literally millions of dollars lost to scams. There really is no time for being slow here. To be frank, the government is hastening a little slowly. Opposition leader Peter Dutton announced in our budget reply speech that this issue is very important. It's a big focus for the coalition, and we will put in place more onerous obligations on big digital companies to stop scams and financial fraud.

A big part of that goes what I've just been talking about: establishing that regulatory environment for the digital world, which doesn't properly exist today. One part is covered and one part, which is enormous, is not covered. It doesn't make sense. The ACCC doesn't think it makes sense. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman doesn't think it makes sense. We don't think it makes sense. The government needs to act on that. The SMS sender ID register, blocking people impersonating the government, is a welcome initiative from the government, but it's somewhat ironic given that the most famous scam impersonating a government over text in Australian history was the 'Mediscare' scam purported by the Labor Party.

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