MADELEINE MORRIS:
A new report out this morning has revealed the devastating impact of online scams on Australians with more than $3 billion lost to criminals last year alone. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says the record losses represent an 80 per cent increase from the year before. Average losses have also jumped by 54 per cent to almost $20,000 per victim.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
The ACCC says the scams are becoming much harder to spot with criminals using emerging technology to impersonate the phone numbers, text messages, email addresses and websites of legitimate organisations.
For more, let’s bring in the Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones. Minister, good morning to you. This is a staggering amount of money we’re talking about here.
STEPHEN JONES:
Yes, when Australians are already doing it tough, to be losing $3 billion to households and small businesses is devastating. A significant jump up over the last 12 months – around about an 80 per cent increase. And since 2020 we’ve seen over 220 per cent increase in average losses.
What we’re seeing is scammers moving on to an industrial scale using new technologies, new capacity to attack Australian households and businesses. And a lot more needs to be done to be combating this.
ROWLAND:
Is corporate Australia, our government struggling to keep up with this emerging technology?
JONES:
It is like a game of Whack‑a‑Mole, and I think all businesses and government are now on notice that the losses are big, the stakes are big and we have to lift our game. It’s why as a federal government we’ve made it a priority. That’s why we’re lifting resources for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to establish a new anti‑scam centre. But it’s also why we’re looking at ways to cut off the avenues that scammers are using to attack customers.
We’ve already put in place SMS filtering technologies to put obligations on phone companies to ensure that they’re filtering some of these damaging SMSs. We want to be able to extend those sorts of capacities, and over the course of the year we’re exploring what more than be done in this area.
And, of course, behind all of this we’re looking at taking the fight up to the hackers and the criminals as well, and my colleague Clare O’Neil has made some announcements overnight about the work we’re doing to take the fight offshore to these criminals wherever they are operating. It’s a whole ecosystem, and we’ve got to fight it as such.
ROWLAND:
Lots of scamming involves scammers getting access to bank accounts. Can the banks step up more in this space?
JONES:
Absolutely. Banks need to lift their game. And I’m working with Treasury and the ACCC on new codes of practice to ensure that the obligations on banks are clear, that we set a bar very high about what banks are expected to do to protect their customers in relation to scams, to ensure that money is kept safe, that their customers’ details are kept safe and that they know exactly what they’ve got to do and consumers know exactly what they can expect from their banks.
ROWLAND:
And if the banks don’t step up, what’s your recourse there?
JONES:
Increasing the fines and penalties has to be a part of the options that we put in place. We went to the election promising that we’d look at increasing the fines and penalties for breaches of new codes of practice, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.
ROWLAND:
Okay. Let’s turn our attention to the Budget next month. Over the weekend your colleague the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, ruled out tax increases during an interview with The Telegraph in Sydney. You are talking about cutting back the deficit, tackling structural deficits in Australia. So no tax increases. That means there’ll be potentially harsh spending cuts?
JONES:
We’ve announced what we’ll do on the area of revenue or taxation increases, and we’ve announced our changes to large balance superannuation, reining in some of the more generous tax concessions that apply there. But outside of that initiative we’re looking at spending cuts and we’re looking at ensuring that we can rein in the growth of expenditure in certain areas.
For example, our colleague Bill Shorten is looking at some of the rorts and frauds that are going on inside the NDIS, ensuring that every dollar that is spent in that program – which has grown enormously over the decade – ensuring that every dollar that is spent in that program goes towards people who have disabilities and are entitled to it and not to people who are rorting and scamming the system.
So initiatives like that will be the sorts of things that we’re looking at to ensure that every single dollar that we’re currently raising from taxpayers is well spent.
ROWLAND:
At the same time, though, is it finally time to help the most vulnerable Australians and raise the JobSeeker amount?
JONES:
Look, I’m not going to get ahead of ourselves on any of the announcements that we’ll be making in this Budget. Of course, it is worth pointing out that unemployment rate is very low, and our number one objective is to keep it low and to ensure that every Australian who can work has the opportunity to work, because that’s by far the better solution.
It's going to be a tight Budget. It’s going to be a very tight Budget, and our capacity to put in place new spending measures is going to be very constrained indeed, Michael.
ROWLAND:
All right, okay. So that includes potentially no more money for job seekers and other welfare recipients?
JONES:
At the risk of repeating myself, I’ve got to say it’s going to be a tight Budget. We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves and make announcements when we’re two to three weeks out, but what I can say – very, very difficult for us in the current circumstances to be looking at new and large expenditure programs when we’ve already got a $60 billion structural deficit and we’re having to service the interest payments on a trillion dollars worth of debt that we’ve inherited. That’s the structure that we’re dealing with, and that’s the structure that Australians expect us to manage and bring that deficit down over time.
ROWLAND:
Okay, Stephen Jones, appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.