Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Carrying on where the member for Moreton left off, it's incredibly important that we understand that those who are most likely to have to deal with scammers are the vulnerable: those who are elderly and those who are, basically, uninitiated. We need to try to convince people to not open that link. Do not let that cookie onto your phone. No, that person has not sent you out a fine for not paying a toll; this is a scam. Vulnerable people, who are generally decent people, believe that everything they get is bona fide, and so they have a propensity to get caught up in these scams.

We find it's just like a thief. If a thief breaks into a house they usually come back, because they know they can do it. That is the problem. Scammers realise that there's a vulnerability in a person, and that opens the person up to further scams. The analytics that sit behind the software show that this person is actually going further, spending more time looking at it and looking at the message for longer. Therefore, they have a propensity to be vulnerable.

In regional areas, sometimes we get things that are quite hilarious. This one is a bit interesting. I'm in Danglemah. Danglemah is in the middle of nowhere. There is no-one around me except the boys that I grew up with. It's off the grid. I get a message that there is some wonderful, delightful human female who wants to meet me, and she's only a kilometre away. So, I stand on the hill and wonder which tree she's living in! If that was in a city context, someone might be vulnerable enough to think, 'I'm lonely, and this is a chance for me to meet another person.' Obviously, it's a scam. The other one that happens out in the regions is: I haven't paid my tolls. To whom have I not paid my tolls? If I was living in Sydney, that would be something I'd very likely consider to be an issue.

What is incredibly important is that it shows our reliance on telecommunications and how good people rely on telecommunications. The one thing worse than a scam is not having any telecommunication service whatsoever. In our area the capacity of scammers to contact people has been increased because of the increase in mobile phone towers. I want to run through the mobile phone towers that are in our area to give a sense of how, in New England, this has increased the propensity for people to be contacted by scammers 24/7. There are new mobile phone towers at Balala, Bonshaw, Drake, Dungowan, Hillgrove, Kings Plains, Rocky Creek, Urbenville, Walcha Road—that's near me—Woolomin, Attunga, Barraba, Bruxner Highway at Sandy Hills, Bruxner Highway at Tabulam, Duri, Elsmore, Fossickers Way between Barraba and Manilla, Hallsville, Invergowrie, Manilla, Moonbi, Mount Carrington, Oxley Vale, Piallamore, Sping Mountain Road at White Rock Mountain west of Glen Innes, the Warral side of Tamworth, Walcha, Westdale, Baldersleigh, Koreelah, Pinkett, Mount Hourigan, Doughboy Mountain—where we've just stopped the swindle factories; I'm really happy about that—Fig Tree Hill near Copeton Dam, Copeton Dam itself, Kingstown, Moonan Flat down near Ellerston, Legume, Torrington, Wellingrove Creek, Weabonga—it's not what people do; it's a village just over the hill from me—Spring Ridge, Blackville, Gilgai, Bukkulla, Glen Elgin, Mole River Exchange, Tenterfield, Watsons Creek and Woods Reef Exchange. We have always tried to make sure people have access to mobile phone technology. In so doing, scammers have access to people 24/7.

I fully support this bill, the Telecommunications Amendment (SMS Sender ID Register) Bill 2024. I think it's really important. It shows that we have the ability to go to people who provide telecommunications and put some further licensing agreements and conditions on them.

I think in the future we'll have to look at social media and what they are doing, because sometimes they seem to run riot without any controls whatsoever. As one person sells a scam to rip off a vulnerable person, another person finds a 16-year-old girl, tells her she's fat, gets her into that evil net of self-identification and self-deprecation and draws them down into a very dark place. This is something that I've been very passionate about in this place for a long while. I don't know why we're so scared to take these people on, but we obviously are.

This bill, as it comes forward, is going to, hopefully—it will never catch up with the scammers, because scammers, by their very nature, are criminals. Most criminals are pretty stupid, but the good ones are quite ingenious, and the ingenious ones will find a new and better way to slip inside the net, to find the person who's vulnerable and probably not as educated and to work out how to get a hold of their money. In the story of scammers we find people whose lives have been completely destroyed. It's not a case of losing hundreds; it's not a case of someone losing thousands; for some of them it's not losing tens of thousands but losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once a person has access to certain details, especially banking details, it's an incredibly dangerous thing. This is what we get in certain areas. One of the other classic scams, of course, is people with all the livery and the impersonation of a bank asking for details in regard to changing an account or updating information. People update their information and, when they come back, all the money—everything—has gone from their account.

We also managed to follow through some of these scammers to see that there's another insidious side to this. In prompting telephone calls, where you get a call from someone and they're obviously overseas—for me, I thought there was some sort of perverted fun in asking them, if they're from Australia, what they thought about how Manly played on the weekend or, if they were in Melbourne, how St Kilda went on the weekend. Another way I always find to annoy them is to just keep talking to them, forever, ask them stupid questions, put on a stupid accent and see if they want to go out for lunch until they realise that you're not vulnerable—you're crazy and annoying—and hang up on you.

However, what I didn't know is that a lot of these people are basically in slave labour. In places such as Cambodia they are indentured for nothing. They have no freedoms and their lives are an absolute misery. We're talking about a person who is basically locked in a room with other people who are beaten up and who have no freedoms whatsoever. This is the other side of scams, which a lot of people don't understand. This is another reason why we should not only have legislation against the scammers but go to the source countries and say, 'Well, what are you doing to do this?'

Some people, very ingeniously and very, very decently, have said to the person: 'Can other people hear what you are saying right now? Are you okay? Can you tell me if you are alright? Are you free?' On the odd occasion, people have said 'No, I'm not.' Then they've said, 'Where exactly are you?'

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:49 to 17:09

What is also part of the telecommunications issue which is so important, as I just mentioned before, is that, in a lot of countries, the people who actually make these scam calls are basically slave labour. They are locked up. They are in quite insidious circumstances. So I temper my response somewhat to people when they call up, because I consider the exact circumstances that that person may find themselves in in the Philippines, in Cambodia or in other areas. So this is bad on all levels, and that is another very good reason why we have to try and stamp it out. It's because people can be contactable just about anywhere on the planet that scammers find this so attractive. You don't have to walk down the street. In the past, scammers went door to door, knocking on them, trying to find gullible people. But now they don't have to. They just have a computer, it calls a number, another person deals with the call, and off they go. We've been trying to make sure that world is covered.

We're trying now also to fight for further mobile phone towers for Kruiapple—which is just out of Yetman—Bunnan, Rouchel and Gundy in the Upper Hunter, Blue Mountain to cover the Enmore and the Winterbourne areas, Legume, Sandy Flat south of Tenterfield, Rangers Valley, Guyra, Niangala, Woolbrook—that one is very important, because that's near me, and I went to Woolbrook Public School—and Port Stephens Cutting, which is incredibly dangerous, and we've got to fix it up. I call on the government to get that $20 million out, because someone is going to get killed on that. There's Werris Creek. I used to live in Wellington Vale.

By reason of mobile telecommunications, people are never away. If they've got a phone in their pocket, and if they've got SMS, they're a potential target for scammers. As such, we have to make sure that, with this legislation and others, we will never wipe them out. But we have to partially catch up, and that's what this legislation does.

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