David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (SMS Sender ID Register) Bill 2024. What this bill seeks to do is something very sensible. I think almost all of us, on some occasion, have received a scam text message that pretends to be from someone that it's not. You might get one that says it's from Westpac, HSBC or Telstra, but it's not. That is what is known as spoofing, where scammers put a false identity in the sender line. The idea is to trick people into believing in what's in that message. This bill seeks to create a register that the telecommunications companies would hold such that, if somebody tried to do impersonate Westpac, Telstra or whoever, the telecommunications company would see that it wasn't from that company and would block the message from getting through. It's a very sensible proposal. There are a few issues with the bill, which I'll come to in a second, but generally it is sensible and something we support.

There is a quite significant irony here, though. The Labor Party is putting forward a bill about not pretending to be someone you're not in a text message, when probably the single most famous example of this happening in Australia was perpetrated by the Australian Labor Party. It was actually eight years ago today that this happened, and it was something that became known as the 'Mediscare' scandal. Back then, in 2016, the Labor Party sent millions and millions of text messages to Australians, pretending to be from Medicare, and in those text messages they made various political statements. I have one here. It's from Saturday 2 July 2016—eight years ago today—and it says it's from Medicare. It wasn't from Medicare; it was from the Labor Party. It says: 'Mr Turnbull's plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to save Medicare.' So this process is called spoofing, and it's something that was pioneered and championed by the Australian Labor Party—so much so that the then Leader of the Opposition, the honourable member for Maribyrnong, admitted to it.

The Sydney Morning Herald published a story, just after the 2016 election, about this text message. The story reads:

The election-day text, which said the government planned to wind back Medicare services, appeared to come from "Medicare".

…   …   …

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Morayfield told reporters the Medicare text idea came from Labor's headquarters in Brisbane.

Mr Shorten was asked directly on Tuesday if the "Mediscare" campaign came out of the Queensland branch of the Labor Party.

"Yes, they've taken responsibility for it," Mr Shorten said.

A number of people, including journalists, claimed on Saturday that they had been sent the same text message from a sender that appeared under the name 'Medicare'.

…   …   …

A spokesman from Queensland Labor confirmed it had sent the text messages …

So this is a pretty ironic situation, isn't it? The most famous example of what the government is now, sensibly, seeking to stop was perpetrated by the government itself. Minister Rowland, the Minister for Communications, said, quite accurately:

It's hard to imagine an Australian who has not received one of these text messages purporting to be from a bank or a toll road operator, for example—

She could have used Medicare—

These fraudsters operate domestically and overseas and use sophisticated technologies to trick innocent Australians …

She's right; they do. And probably the biggest one ever was from the Labor Party, but we won't quibble about that. I'm pleased that the Labor Party is seeking to ensure that it can never again do what it did with such enthusiasm in 2016. It's good that they want to legislate to stop that from happening again.

There are a few curiosities in the bill. It doesn't say whether the register will be mandatory or voluntary on the part of the telecommunications sector. That's a pretty important point. I believe the sector is open to it being mandatory and is broadly supportive of this legislation, but it's a pretty important point which is missing from the legislation. It also doesn't set a date for when the register will actually start working. Again, that would be good.

The government announced plans for this in April 2023—that's 16 months ago—and, as we're often seeing in the communications portfolio, there has been a sort of bureaucratic inertia. It's just layer upon layer of roundtables and consultative committees and, generally, not a great deal happening. In April 2023 the government says, 'We're going to do this'; 16 months later the legislation arrives, but then the legislation doesn't actually tell you when it will happen. That suggests it will not be happening for a little while. That is unfortunate, but it is a sensible piece of legislation.

As I said before, we've all been recipients of those text messages. Unfortunately, they often target older Australians and people who might be less familiar with how these scams work, who, unfortunately, can be susceptible to responding to some of these text messages. In my own electorate we have seen a shocking example of this, with a scam involving a scammer pretending to be HSBC Bank. This scam has led to numerous people, just in my own electorate, losing up to $50,000 each. I have very serious concerns about the way in which HSBC has responded, or, more frankly, has failed to respond to that scam. I know that the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, AFCA, is looking into this very closely, and I look forward to AFCA seeking a resolution—a resolution which is fair to those people who have been scammed out of very significant amounts of money. In some cases, those amounts equal their life savings.

This is a really serious issue. It's appropriate that the government moves in this area. It has taken too long, but it's better late than never. The coalition will support this legislation, but it is irony upon irony that the greatest perpetrator of scam texts in our history was the Labor Party, through the shocking 'Mediscare' scam. It's pleasing that, under this law, that will be unlawful in the future.

Debate adjourned.