Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Warringah for bringing this motion to parliament. Scams and scam prevention is something I've personally taken a keen interest in since coming to this place and something I have raised not only in this chamber but a number of times in my role on the House Economics Committee. I'd like to thank the member for Indi for her contribution as well. I think everyone in this place wants to push the government to come up with solutions here, and thankfully we have. This is an area that needs immediate and ongoing attention. As members of the House Economics Committee, with my good friend the member for Hawke, we are working very closely with the Assistant Treasurer to make sure that that happens, because, when we came to office, Australians were losing over $3 billion a year to scams. Online, text message, phone and in-person scams were rampant, and losses doubled each year between 2019 and 2022.

For too long, scams were put into the too-hard basket by the Liberals and Nationals. Under the previous government, Australians were abandoned in the face of this escalating threat. As they kept wages down, they allowed scams to skyrocket—wages down, scams up. We're a government that takes scamming and being scammed seriously. We've made critical investments in the fight against scammers, and the results are there for everyone to see.

I've had the opportunity to engage with the big four banks on this issue, and, in 2023, I asked them directly about what they were doing to combat scams. At that time, it was clear that the individual banks were taking individual action, but the response across the sector was inconsistent. Each bank had its own approach—some were doing okay, while others were not—and the overall data showed that these efforts were falling well short of what was needed.

In our most recent hearings, which the member for Canberra just referred to, it was pleasing to see a much more coordinated and focused approach from them. The banks know that this government has them on the hook, and they're responding. They're now working closely with the National Anti-Scam Centre, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to form a united front against scammers. They've strengthened controls around fund transfers, and they're implementing new technologies to detect suspicious transactions in real time. They should have done that sooner, but it took a coordinated approach from this government to make them do it.

We need this coordinated sectorwide effort to protect consumers, and that's why we established the National Anti-Scam Centre. It started in July last year, and we've seen a remarkable turnaround in scam losses. For the first time since 2016, annual scam losses declined in 2023. This is proof that our scam strategy is working, but it also reminds us that the work is far from over.

This matter of public importance specifically goes to electronic funds transfer, but we need to note that there are more than just banks at play in the scam ecosystem: telecommunications providers and, of course, our good friends in the social media platforms. The government has already taken decisive action in telecommunications with the SMS Sender ID Registry so that scammers can't spoof the banks, the ATO, LinkedIn or myGov in their text messages headers. This is simple but effective, and it took a Labor government to do it.

But, for digital and social media platforms, progress hasn't been so great to date. These platforms facilitate communication, and they provide scammers with almost unlimited potential to reach and contact unsuspecting Australians. Just as we hold the banks and the telecommunications providers to account, we must ensure that digital social media platforms play their part in protecting consumers. How are we going to do that?

We just heard from the Assistant Treasurer that the government will introduce new industry codes designed to hold these businesses—all of them—equally accountable for their role in preventing, detecting and responding to scams. They will cover banks, telcos and digital social media platforms as part of the coordinated approach that we need. Each sector will be required to have systems in place to detect, disrupt and prevent scams, and, importantly, if they fail to meet their obligations, they will be held accountable. If these companies don't comply with the new codes, they'll be liable to compensate victims.

For too long, the burden of scams has fallen upon the individual, with Australians losing their hard-earned money. We're a government determined to address it.

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