Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Scams are a massive issue in my community, and I think all of us on this side of the House agree with the member for Warringah that protecting consumers from scams is a must-have, core economic policy. Our government have been doing an enormous amount of work to make sure that we do what we can to stop scammers from taking advantage of people in our communities.

As a local member, in my electorate of Chisholm I've run many, many scam forums with hundreds and hundreds of people in attendance. In fact, every single time we run a scams forum we are oversubscribed almost as soon as we advertise the event, such is the interest in my community from my constituents. In every newsletter that I put out to constituents I advertise the fact that my office is very willing and able to send out The little black book of scams, which is a wonderful resource from the ACCC. It's available in a range of different languages, and we have sent out thousands of these in the time since I was elected.

I will take the opportunity here to remind people of the steps that they can take to ensure they do not fall victim to a scam. I advise people to stop: if someone calls, someone texts or someone emails, don't feel obliged to respond; you should delete or hang up—don't engage and don't click the link. I advise people to check: verify that the person who is contacting you, whether they pretend to be from a bank or from another entity, is who they say they are. Independently verify this. And I advise people to report: if you think you've been victim to a scammer, please go through your bank and also make a report through Scamwatch. I do this all the time when I am contacted by scammers, which unfortunately does happen frequently.

We know that behind every single dollar stolen by a criminal scammer is a story of financial and emotional distress, a very human story and a story of injustice. We have been prioritising action on scams since we came to government. When those opposite left office, Australians were losing over $3 billion a year to scams, and it looked like it would, over time, get higher had they remained in office. Those opposite had backward priorities, keeping wages down as a deliberate design feature of their economic strategy and abandoning consumers in the face of a growing global threat from scams—so wages were down, and scams were up. When we were elected, we made it a priority to not only grow wages, which of course is very important; support wage increases for our most vulnerable; and deliver a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer. We're also protecting the hard-earned money of all of our constituents in our communities from the threat of scammers.

We've invested over $154 million in the fight against scammers. In the first phase of our fight, we established the really important National Anti-Scam Centre, a world-leading asset of consumer protection infrastructure, bringing together the expertise and capability of government agencies, law enforcement and the private sector. We're using data and information-sharing capabilities to detect scams and prevent them reaching potential victims. I'm really pleased to say that this strategy is working. Since we established the National Anti-Scam Centre, scam losses have been reducing. Annual scam losses declined in 2023 for the first time since 2016. The second phase of our response will involve legislating a scams code framework and new mandatory industry codes. Our key focus is on preventing criminals ever reaching their targets, not waiting for scams to occur in the first place. We're going to be working with a range of sectors including the banking sector and telecommunications sectors. We need to make sure this is a whole-of-government approach.

We take the issue of scams and scammers in our community very seriously, just as the people in our community do. This is a very legitimate and a very significant worry for so many of the people that we represent in this place. I'm really pleased to be part of a government that is taking action to bring scams down and protect our communities.

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