Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I'm making the point that, if we continued the policies adopted by others, those losses per annum would go from $3 billion to $6 billion to $12 billion over the term of this parliament. The good news is that, because of the policies that have been implemented by the Albanese government, they haven't. In fact, for the first time in years, we're seeing scam losses actually decline. They've declined because we have put in place a range of measures, including standing up Australia's—in fact the world's—first national antiscam centre, which is taking the fight to scammers. You can't keep people safe unless you're keeping their money safe, and we're dedicated to ensuring we're keeping people's money safe. We've stood up the National Anti-Scam Centre. We've got the Australian Securities and Investments Commission pulling down fake websites. There have been over 4,000 already. My friend the Minister for Communications is working with the telecommunications companies to ensure that they're blocking more and more—in fact millions—of those menacing SMS messages. There's more work to come.

Of course, it's not game over. We've got to continue taking the fight up to the scammers. It's why this year we'll be implementing tough new codes of practice. Those codes of practice will put obligations on banks, social media companies and telecommunications companies to ensure we are doing more and more to keep people's money safe. We will not adopt the same policies of those opposite, which saw scam losses double, and then double, and then double again. We're committed to keeping people's money safe, because we want them to earn more, to keep more of what they earn and to keep their money safe.

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