Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Financial Services. Australians lost $3 billion to scams in 2022. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to end a decade of neglect and to fight back against scammers to protect Australians from the threat of scams?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Adelaide for the question, and I thank him for organising a tremendous community forum in his electorate on Friday last week. We had lots of people there sharing their stories and were very keen to know what the government was doing to help them in the battle against scammers. Over the last few weeks, we've held a number of town hall meetings around the country, in the electorates of Tangney, Swan, Hasluck, Macquarie, Boothby, Isaacs, Moreton and Dunkley. At each of these forums, people have been telling the same story. They're being bombarded by emails and SMSs. They're having their money stolen, or threatened to be stolen, by criminal gangs who are preying on them and their innocence, and it's impacting their ability to engage in online commerce. They're that they want the government to do something about it. They know that the problem has got worse and worse and worse.

The simple fact of the matter is that the previous government on this issue was completely indolent. They left Australian households on their own to fight the scammers. Well, there's a new government, a new change and a fresh approach, and we are on the side of consumers. We're going to fight back against the scammers. We're establishing a national anti-scam centre, a world first, as a result of the announcement made in the budget last week—over $56 million. It will have three functions. The first is real-time reporting and sharing of information. So if a scam is reported anywhere in the country, it's shared with the people who need to act fast to pull up the barriers, put the red flags in, and stop the scammers from going to work. We're also going to put in place new fusion cells, which are action squads that will go after the scammers who are preying on Australians. Something the previous mob could have done, but they didn't!

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The members for Fairfax and Page are warned.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're making a lot of noise. They should be as angry as they are now about the billions of dollars ripped out of Australians' bank accounts and flooded overseas on their watch. If only they were as angry about that as they are today. This initiative will work hand in hand with the work that my colleague the Minister for Communications is doing to put in place new registers for SMSs to ensure that those SMS messages are being filtered and blocked at source. It works hand in hand with the work that the Minister for Cyber Security is doing to ensure that we are uplifting our capacity as well. We will be putting in place new industry codes to ensure that we set out the responsibilities of the private sector and the rights of individual citizens. Australians won't be left alone under this government, unlike the previous mob. (Time expired)