Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

More and more Australians are being hit by scams. In 2023, Australians lost $2.7 billion to scams. We made over 601,000 scam reports, an 18.5 per cent increase on 2022. This is despite the ACMA blocking more than 533 million scam texts and 1.9 million scam calls between July 2022 and March 2024. Investment scams caused the most harm, taking $1.3 billion. Remote access scams took $256 million. While we may laugh about some of the more obvious scams going around, they work, otherwise they wouldn't still happen. These are not some random efforts. These are highly targeted and coordinated efforts.

Some years ago, when I was doing some training on cybersecurity, I heard about a scam group operating out of Europe that had been broken up. The leads consisted of a couple of PhDs in computing and four PhDs in psychology, because we, humans, are the weak link and the scammers know that social engineering—conning us and convincing us to click on the blue link—is the key to accessing our bank accounts, accessing our credit cards, accessing our identity information, accessing our confidential information and accessing our computers at home and at work.

Increasingly I hear from people in Boothby about how convincing these scams are. They mimic banks. They mimic government departments, utility companies and retailers. They look convincing and, given so much of our lives are conducted electronically via SMS, email and online access, we are all vulnerable. Unfortunately, people receiving these SMS impersonation scams are often deceived into responding or taking action suggested by these text messages. One click is all it takes when you're tired or stressed, or when you're expecting a message and something comes through at just the wrong time and looks convincing, and these scammers make it their business to look convincing. That one click can put you into a world of pain, with the loss of life savings, identity documents, and confidence. But playing whack-a-mole with scammers is a losing game. As fast as one number is blocked, they come through on another. There has to be a better way, a way that can give Australians confidence that when they get a text it is really from a known entity—or they can ignore it, or block and delete.

As part of a comprehensive range of measures the Albanese Labor government is putting in place to combat scammers—

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