Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Not that long ago, the idea of a con artist or a scam was something many could claim to see coming a mile away. It was the dodgy guy who had a bridge to sell you in Sydney, or it was the kerbside charlatan who would encourage innocent pedestrians to 'just watch the shell', but, in 2024, scams are increasingly sophisticated and pervasive. I thank the member for Warringah for raising this important matter of public importance.

The constantly evolving nature of modern scammers is a key issue for all of us, with over 160,000 scams costing hundreds of millions of dollars already reported to Scamwatch this year alone. Concerningly, over 95 per cent of people who are scammed don't get any money back, and this is just a measure of those who report them, with the true number of individuals scammed likely to be much higher. Everyone I know has received a scam phone call, email or text message. And as everyday aspects of our lives are increasingly moved online, whether that's shopping, banking or socialising, it has been too easy for scammers to get at us.

My office literally hears from hundreds of people who have fallen victim to incredibly sophisticated scams every month, with one person recently contacting me because her elderly parents had lost $250,000 to an investment scam that was presented as an opportunity with two well-known financial institutions. Once discovered, neither financial institution accepted any responsibility, and the money was gone. Another person recently reported signing up to a fake dating site with a recurring monthly charge, and, shockingly, in this case the bank again refused to help recover the payments, because they argued the customer had given his details over freely. In almost all cases, the frustrating reality is people who are scammed are not clear on who they should contact or how, and overwhelmingly they are left feeling embarrassed and helpless.

The data tells us scams disproportionately impact older and vulnerable Australians, and increasingly people are looking to the government to ensure adequate protections are legislated and enforced. As with any threat, disruption, detection and deterrence are fundamental, and key to those are awareness and education. In my electorate of North Sydney, with the help of Scamwatch, we've been hosting a series of community seminars designed to teach people how to recognise and respond to scams. Over two sessions to date, one of which was translated into Mandarin, attendees have been encouraged to stop, think and protect to ensure they do not fall foul of these fraudsters. But, as I've participated in these sessions, I've developed a belief that our government should be doing more to spread that education, be that via a mass public education campaign or partnering with the commercial sector to ensure widespread education is on the go or working with schools and other care environments to ensure people are alert but not alarmed. So I take this opportunity to call on the government today to invest in that education.

At the same time, the truth is better detection of scams requires better information sharing. I note the whole-of-ecosystem approach was core to the government's recently proposed scams code framework. But, while we're encouraged to delete and report scam when we receive it, as a nation we need to do better to enable that data to be shared. While banks have made some inroads, and notwithstanding the work of the National Anti-Scam Centre and the Fusion Cell taskforce, information on the latest scams just doesn't get shared widely enough.

As more and more services push consumers to transact entirely online, surely those services have a responsibility to foot the bill when scammers successfully hack their processes. I, again, take this opportunity to call on the government to establish a national scam compensation fund that can be a source of recompense when innocent individuals are scammed. We need to respond by ensuring risks are borne by those most able to mitigate scams' harm. For this reason, I believe the fund could be created by applying a levy across all institutions, whether it be banks, telcos, social media channels, that they need to input in, perhaps one specifically calculated based on the number of customer reports of being defrauded via them. These organisations can and should do more of the heavy lifting here, particularly when ASIC recently has reported a disturbing history of failing to act.

The government has announced some welcome initiatives including the SMS registry and the proposed scams code framework, and early signs are that, despite the staggering absolute numbers, losses from scams are abating. But we can and should do more to bring regulators, industry and consumers together to continue this fight, as it's ultimately bigger than any one person or any one entity.

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