David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about an increasingly urgent issue impacting a growing number of Australians: scams. I asked a question about scams in question time. In 2023, there was an 18.3 per cent increase in the number of scam reports. Collectively Australians lost $2.74 billion last year. That's the equivalent of one per cent of our country's GDP. Scams are wreaking havoc in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and causing emotional damage in the midst of a mental health crisis in this country. We need the government to do more and to do more quickly. I commend the consultation that was undertaken at the end of last year and concluded at the end of January this year. We now need to see that legislation. We need to see it in this place to be able to better deal with this issue across a whole range of sectors, from banking to social media. Australians need and deserve better protections from scammers.

This is urgent. We've seen this fortnight that the government can actually deliver legislation when it's urgent, and I would argue that this is one of those things that should be added to the priority list. A fellow Canberran who I've met with has lost an eye-watering $1.6 million to scammers—her entire inheritance. They are one of tens of thousands of bank customers who haven't been properly protected or reimbursed and, despite the big talk from the banks about the steps they're taking, ASIC just this week released a further report highlighting the inadequacy and immaturity—as they called it—of their scam prevention and reimbursement schemes.

In a review of 15 banks outside of the big four, ASIC found that those banks had detected and stopped just 19 per cent of scam transactions by value. It's inadequate, and we need legislation to fix it.