MATTHEW PANTELIS:
Open for public consultation from today, companies that fail to protect their customers from scams could be forced to pay compensation under proposed new laws. You can have your say on this if you like. The federal government will today announce, and has today announced, major anti‑scam reforms, and this means social media platforms, banks, telcos will have to take greater action to stop Australians being exploited. The fines could total millions. This is a good move, I think. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones is on the line. Assistant Treasurer, good morning.
STEPHEN JONES:
Matthew, good to you with you.
PANTELIS:
So how will this work?
JONES:
So, what we have looked at is what’s the best mechanism possible to provide greater protections for Australians. We have looked at the ecosystem that scams operate in. They come to us via a telecommunications network or an SMS message or a phone call. They come to us via a social media platform, via an ad or a WhatsApp message, and obviously the bank has the money at the end of the transaction. So, we need all of these parts in the ecosystem to lift their protections, do much, much more to keep their customers safe. So the new law will put in place obligations on these designated industries to prevent, to detect, to disrupt, to respond to reports of scams and to report scams themselves, to others – to the government and to other agencies within the network. All of it aimed at keeping customers safe and preventing a scam from occurring. But if one does get through the system because one of these businesses has done the wrong thing and failed to meet their obligations, fines, penalties, compensation will follow.
PANTELIS:
Okay. With banks – and banks will tell you, the ABA will certainly tell you they have put in all sorts of procedures and improved their security and tried to stop people, you know, they will ask the question ‘why are you using the money?’, ‘why are you taking out this much money?’ if you are in a branch and that’s all very well and good. But they’re the last door, I suppose, the last possible way of stopping somebody handing out cash unwillingly, unknowingly to a scammer.
JONES:
Yes.
PANTELIS:
Have they done enough? I mean, how do we get to the point where you just can’t give your money to a scammer? Or is that impossible?
JONES:
Well, the law at the moment is a bit vague in some areas. The banks under current law must refund your money if money has left your account and it wasn’t an authorised transaction. The problem with scams is so often they are authorised, and people have been lured into making these transactions because somebody is pretending to be who they aren’t. So, we need to improve the law and the protections in these areas. We don’t want to get to a situation where a bank will always refuse to honour what a customer has asked them to do, because when you and I put our money in a bank we do it on the condition that the bank lets us take it out when we want to and lets us buy things with it because it’s our money.
PANTELIS:
Yeah.
JONES:
So, we have got to get the balance right between having obligations on them to detect, to prevent and to respond to scams in their ecosystem, but also on the other players within the system as well. Because, you know, Facebook takes money from advertising and having things on Facebook Marketplace and they are not the only ones, other social media platforms do as well. So it’s a bit odd that they are making money and Australians are losing money out of posting these scam advertisements. So, we have got to lift the bar there and put new obligations in place there as well. So, everybody needs to lift the bar, we’ll start with banks and telcos and social media platforms. When we get that nailed out we will have to move to other areas of the economy because we know scammers will move to where the easiest door is to open.
PANTELIS:
Yeah, all right. Now, certainly what you are saying about social media – and the David Kochs of the world, Dick Smiths ‑ Twiggy Forest who’s is taking Meta to court over the fake AI videos, which look and sound real – they look and sound like the person they are representing – telling people to invest their money in cryptocurrency or whatever it might be, get involved in this ground floor, and I trust it, and it has got my approval. I mean, that’s just unconscionable for the social media companies to leave these up, and for it to go to court for goodness sake.
JONES:
Exactly. Exactly. And one of the obligations we will have upon them is to pull down that fake material, that criminal content. So, report and respond are a key part of the architecture of our new laws, and if they don’t do it obviously fines and penalties apply. It is unconscionable, but if you are a high‑profile Australian, Twiggy is in the US at the moment – he might have the resources to take it to court.
PANTELIS:
That’s the thing, yes.
JONES:
But most Australians don’t, and whether you are an Olympian or a footballer or whatever, they have all had their identity stolen by these gangs to lure Australians into losing money and we can’t tolerate it. We have got to improve the protection.
PANTELIS:
Is this being done around the world? I imagine other countries will be taking similar steps. Are we doing anything different in that regard in this?
JONES:
I’ve had a look around the world and I have spoken to my counterparts in other countries, none of them have nailed it in my view. Some of them just jumped straight to compensation and say if somebody loses money then we will just make the bank pay. And I can see the superficial attraction in that, but it will create a honeypot. You will get every scammer in the world saying come to Australia, you know, it’s a victimless crime because the bank will always pay, and I think the better approach is to have prevention in place. So that’s what we are doing that’s different, having new laws which are consumer‑focused, which are putting obligations for prevention. Yes, compensation is a part of it, but the first limb is prevention. So, I think what we are doing is different and I would argue better than any other country in the world.
PANTELIS:
Okay. Telecommunication companies. Telcos would have the obligation, I imagine, under your proposals to try and stop the texts that I often get at 2 or 3 in the morning telling me I have driven on a toll road and haven’t paid.
JONES:
There’s no toll roads in Adelaide.
PANTELIS:
Exactly. There is your big tip, number one. But also the parcel that, you know, is on the way but the address is wrong or whatever, and, again, haven’t ordered anything for ages so not a problem. But that’s the sort of thing, I imagine, you are trying to stomp out to get the telcos on top of that, but it’s hard when the numbers are masked, so how do you get on that and stop the texts from coming through?
JONES:
Spot on. So, we are going to have – we’ve got essentially a blacklist at the moment where we are filtering out, you know, millions of calls and messages every week. But still, lots coming through. Because as soon as we create a – we put a number on a blacklist, another one pops up. So, under the new arrangements, we are going to have a whitelist. So, if you want to send a message out and you say you’re a bank or you say you’re a telco, you say you’re Australia Post, your name has to be on the register and the name and the number has to match, and if you try to send something out and it doesn’t match with the names on the register it’s blocked. So that’s the new approach that we’ll be implementing through these arrangements. But, you know, as technology has evolved and as new things evolve, we’ll want to continually upgrade the requirements on telcos and others, to be honest, about what we expect as reasonable to keep customers safe.
PANTELIS:
Yeah, and I suppose, too, the thing we have all got to keep in mind is not to be so trusting because – and I think older people, without any disrespect meant, are overly trusting – and that’s the world they were raised in. You know, we could leave doors open and all the rest in homes way back when.
JONES:
Yes.
PANTELIS:
But times have changed and if somebody tells you something on the phone or online it ain’t necessarily so.
JONES:
Exactly. I mean, a few tips that I always give when I’m talking about this: Don’t press those bloody blue links on your SMSs –
PANTELIS:
Yes, 100 per cent.
JONES:
– because that’s how scammers lure you off to a fake website. And don’t give your information out to an unsolicited call. Don’t let somebody remote access into your computer. The scam where they say we have noticed – we have detected some suspicious activity on your internet, you have just got to let us in there to stop this happening. They are not trying to stop it happening, they’re actually the bad guys trying to get into your computer and your bank account and your personal details. So those 3 things, good tips for your listeners to keep themselves safe.
PANTELIS:
So, the ACCC, the Competition and Consumer Commission, that will be undertaking this and imposing the law here trying to put it into practice?
JONES:
Yes, they’ll be the system‑wide regulator to ensure that everyone is obeying the law. But we will also be having a role for the other regulators in the space as well to ensure they are looking after their part of the ecosystem. If I could use this expression, this is all about raising the bar to ensure we are doing more right across the economy to keep Australians safe.
PANTELIS:
And you would expect this to be in place later this year, early next?
JONES:
Yes, so a quick consultation period, like I have been talking to people for quite some time about it, but a consultation period formally over the next 3 weeks just to make sure we have got the details of the legislation right. I’ll make some changes based on that and then getting into Parliament this year and hopefully through as soon as possible. I want this in place, Australians are losing, you know, $2.75 billion in scams last year and every one of those dollars has a tragedy behind it.
PANTELIS:
Yes. 100 per cent it is. All right. Stephen Jones, appreciate your time. Thank you.
JONES:
Good to talk.