MICHELLE ROWLAND:
Good afternoon everyone. Too many Australians are getting ripped off by dodgy scam texts and we’re cracking down on it. The Albanese government is disrupting criminal scammers by implementing a mandatory SMS sender ID register. This important change will help stop scammers from using the names of trusted brands like financial institutions, service providers or government entities, like Australia Post, Linkt or myGov, and deceiving Australians into thinking the scam messages are actually from reputable sources.
SMS is now the most common form of scam delivery in Australia. Australians would have all received a text message purporting to be from a reputable source, and that costs us tens of millions of dollars each year. These are insidious criminals who particularly prey on the most vulnerable, including older Australians, people from non‑English speaking backgrounds and people with the disability. This is simply not acceptable and we’re working to put it to an end.
This mandatory register will enable fraudulent messages to be blocked or flagged as a scam, better protecting consumers from being cheated. The register will do this by requiring all brands and entities that use SMS sender IDs to register these as Sender IDs and requiring telcos to block or tag Sender IDs that are not registered as possible scams. Requiring mandatory registration of Sender IDs will do a number of things. It will provide a very high level of protection for consumers and legitimate entities. It will decrease the frequency and financial losses of SMS impersonation scams on consumers. It will disrupt the business model for SMS impersonation scams and it will make Australia a harder target for scam activity.
Importantly, this measure will also help restore confidence in SMS as a communications service. For too long, Australians have grown to distrust SMS because of the large amount of scams that have been associated with it. The ACMA will launch and maintain the register and the government expects registration of Sender IDs to be open from late 2025. And while this work is underway, the pilot SMS Sender ID register that’s been established by the ACA and industry in December 2023 will continue to operate.
STEPHEN JONES:
Thanks so much, Michelle, and that last point that you made is a really important one. If people don’t trust the rails of modern commerce and communications, they just stop using them. Most people won’t answer a phone call when they don’t recognise the number because they think it’s a scam and whether it’s a business or a government agency that needs in an emergency or an important situation to send a message out to their customers, or to the residents of a district. People need to have confidence that this isn’t a scam. So this is really important stuff. It’s really good social policy, but it’s incredibly important economic policy as well, ensuring that the way we do business is safe and secure for everyone, and working with Michelle on this has been an enormous pleasure and stands in stark contrast to the previous government.
When we came into government, scams were out of control, they were doubling every year and had been doubling every year since 2016. Three billion dollars when we came into office, they would have hit $6 billion if we did nothing. Well, the good news is we didn’t do nothing. We took the problem seriously. Previous government saw this as a private problem with no public solution. We think this is a problem that everyone needs to lean into. Telecommunications companies, social media platforms, banks and the government. The registries are part of it. We’ve stood up a National Anti‑Scam Centre, we’ve given the ACCC and we’ve given ASIC powers and resources to pull down his fake investment websites and they’re doing it close to 10,000 – already being pulled down. The good news for Australians, scam losses are coming down, by over 40 per cent in the last year. Australia is the only country in the world that can make that claim. Every other country in the world, scam losses are going up. But what you see in Australia is the opposite trajectory because we’re working across government, we’re working across the economy to ensure that Australia is the toughest destination in the world for scammers to make a dollar.
Now I want to say something about a recent announcement or an announcement today from the Commonwealth Bank that they intend to charge 3 dollars for Australians to access cash from their bank account at a bank branch or Australia Post. This is a kick in the guts for ordinary Australians and the worst Christmas present imaginable. Commonwealth Bank has to rethink this terrible decision. It seems to me to be a tax on Australians who demand the right to use their cash, and the government won’t stand for it. We’re working for Australians to ensure they can continue to use cash if they so choose. But if they don’t use cash and they want to use a debit card for their everyday transactions, they shouldn’t be slogged with a surcharge for doing it. And if they want to go in and see their bank branch with the – Australians should have access to banking services wherever they live. So, we say to Commonwealth Bank, this is the worst Christmas present ever. It’s a kick in the guts to your customers. Happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST:
Ministers, a growing cohort of media executives fear that unless the government designates Meta and enforces the News Media Bargaining Code, that there would be nothing to deter Google from going the same way. When will the government announce its response to Meta and what steps is the government taking to ensure the security of commercial revenues received from both Meta and Google?
JONES:
Thanks for your question. Thanks for your interest in a really important area. The government has made it quite clear that we expect social media platforms to follow the law, but more importantly than that to make a contribution to the importance of public interest journalism in this country. We’ve been working hard, Michelle and myself have been working hard on the response. The News Media Bargaining Code was a perfectly sensible set of arrangements for the circumstances which existed in 2021. Just rolling it out again won’t get the same result in 2024. So, we’ve been working hard on a comprehensive response and we’ll have more say on that at a very near future and you won’t have to wait very long.
JOURNALIST:
Minister will it be this year?
JONES:
Yes it will be this year.
JOURNALIST:
There’s a story in the Guardian today about Sportsbet that pausing its advertising on Spotify because children were being exposed to gambling advertisements while trying to listen to songs by The Wiggles, songs from Moana. You said when implementing the social media ban for children that it was such a matter of urgency. I’m wondering, what what’s the difference in terms of protecting children from exposure to gambling advertisements? Why not the same urgency?
ROWLAND:
Well, they are both urgent because we’re talking about harms to vulnerable cohorts and that’s why we continue to work through both issues. As you know, we had world‑leading legislation pass the parliament last week. There will be an implementation timeframe for that, but we also continue to work on what we can do in other areas to protect children from harms and that is one of the fundamental tenets for what we are examining in terms of wagering advertising. The important point for both is that they are both harms and they both need to be gotten right by government. So, we’ll continue to work through this, but again, we recognise that this goes to the key issue of harms and harm minimisation and prevention. And just like scams, the government’s very focused on it.
JOURNALIST:
Ministers, sorry to veer off topic, the President‑elect overnight issued a, call it a threat, but said there’d be ‘all hell to pay’ if by January when he is sworn in, if the hostages, Israeli hostages in Gaza weren’t released there’s be hell to pay. Could we just get an idea of the government’s reaction to that? It is a complex and fraught situation, but that sort of threat or promise by the President‑elect, what’s the government’s reaction to that.
ROWLAND:
Well, I know the Minister for Foreign Affairs will have more to say on that, but we maintain our position as a government, that the hostages need to be released, there needs to be a ceasefire and that all parties should be working towards that end.