STEPHEN JONES:
All good to go? Fantastic. Well lovely to be with you all here this morning. Great to be here with Assistant Commissioner, Rebecca Fealy who is in charge of the Australian Tax Office’s intelligence operation. Big week in Canberra, delighted that from this week from the 1st of July every Australian taxpayer has received a tax cut, every Australian worker has seen a boost in their superannuation and all minimum wage workers have seen a boost in their pay. So wages are up, taxes are down, superannuation is up. That’s a good news story in anyone’s language.
Since coming to government the Albanese government has been focused on reducing scams. When we came into office Australians were losing $3 billion a year to the International criminal gangs and the locals who are robbing them of their hard‑earned cash. $3 billion a year and for the last decade that number had been doubling every year. Previously Australians have been left to fight on their own. We thought that wasn’t good enough. We thought that scams should be treated with the same seriousness as any other crime. So we’ve put in place a comprehensive program to take the war up to the scammers. Set up a National Anti‑Scam Centre, we’ve empowered the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and funded them to pull down fake investment websites because investment scams are one of the biggest areas of losses. We’re working with partners in the private sector to ensure that they are lifting their game and ensuring that they’re putting in place greater protections for their customers and for all Australians. Later this year I’ll be introducing new legislation to ensure the telecommunications companies, banks, social media platforms are lifting their game and providing greater protections for Australians and if they fail, compensation will follow.
But an important part of the program is ensuring that government and government agencies are a part of that war against the scammers and against the criminals who are attempting to steal our money and our information. And I’m delighted to announce this morning that the Australian Tax Office will be joining Australian Financial Crimes Exchange. The Australian Financial Crimes Exchange has got an important function. It’s an intelligence gathering and sharing operation amongst banks and telecommunications companies and the National Anti‑Scam Centre. Having the tax office join the financial crimes exchange means that they’ll be a receiver of the intelligence that is being produced and shared by banks and telecommunications companies. But also eventually being able to contribute to that body of knowledge and intelligence. And the sort of intelligence I’m talking about is where we know that scammers are using particular URLs or particular phone numbers or particular websites to attack their victims. That will be shared with Australian Tax Office where banks detect mule accounts or suspicious activity from particular destinations. That information can be shared with Australian Tax Office and the Australian Tax Office will be able to use that information together with their own data that they’re collecting to protect Australian taxpayers to ensure that their money and their information is kept safe.
We’ve seen over the last couple of years a significant increase in attempts by these criminal gangs to use somebody’s MyGovID or the tax office portal as an attempt to take over their identity and use that identity to set up bank accounts or rob them of money or put in fictitious tax claims. These are all vectors for the new sorts of frauds and the new sorts of scams that are going on. The Albanese government is determined to take them on. So the tax office today joining the financial crimes exchange. Also very pleased that we’ve provided them with an additional $187 million to uplift their own fraud prevention and detection activity. All a part of Albanese government’s war on the scammers. And it’s all about keeping Australians information and their money safe. Assistant commissioner, I invite you to make some additional comments.
REBECCA FEALY:
Thank you minister and thank you everyone for your time this morning. Here at the Australian Taxation Office we’ve got a huge responsibility to protect the personal information of the community and Australia’s revenue. Unfortunately we have seen an unprecedented increase in the pace, scale and size of attempted fraud against the ATO and we are strengthening our systems and controls and adapting them accordingly. By joining the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange we will receive new information and intelligence which will help us in our efforts to better prevent detect, and respond to fraud scams and financial crime.
We will be joining alongside over 35 existing members from the telecommunications, banking and superannuation sectors to jointly combat financial crime, fraud and scams together. Fraudsters operate in a shared ecosystem and we need to share in the fight against them. In addition to joining the financial crimes exchange we will be strengthening our ATO systems and controls to better protect you the taxpayer as well as to fight fraud. In addition the Australian financial crimes exchange information and intelligence will complement the ATO’s existing data and intelligence holdings and this will enable us to uncover criminal activity and take action to protect your account and to bring fraudsters to consequence. Thank you.