STEPHEN JONES:
Well, good morning, everyone. Great to be here. This is an exciting day. For years Australians have had to fight the scammers on their own, and the price has been horrific – over $3 billion worth of money lost to scammers over the last year alone. The biggest part of that loss has been investment scams.
The Albanese government wants to help Australians and small businesses take up the fight to the scammers. Today we’re very excited about the fact that we are launching our National Anti‑Scam Centre. It’s a first for Australia and it will be about the government taking the fight up to scammers to ensure that Australians aren’t left on their own.
The National Anti‑Scam Centre will have three critical functions, the first is disruption. It’s about ensuring that whether those criminal networks are operating in Australia or wherever they’re working around the world we’ll be disrupting their activity. We’ll be starting today by launching a new fusion cell or a taskforce bringing together the expertise from our regulators. And I’m delighted to be here with Catriona Lowe, the Deputy Chair of the ACCC, and Danielle Press, the Commissioner for ASIC, two critical regulators in the fight against scams.
They’ll be bringing together the resources of both ASIC and the ACCC together with expertise from industry – our banks, our telecommunications companies, our social media platforms – bringing strategies, tactics together to take the fight up to scammers, bringing in the expertise from wherever it lies, whether it’s in a telecommunications company, a bank, a social media platform, two of our great regulators and even the police force, bringing their expertise together and putting a strategy together to take on the scammers.
And we know that the scammers are nimble. So if we put in place a strategy to take them on and we’re successful, they’ll move on to something else. Which is why this has got to be a continual strategy, and we’ll be setting these up over the course of the year to take the fight up to the scammers.
So in addition to the disruption activity the National Anti‑Scam Centre will also have a critical role in providing ongoing information and education to Australians and small businesses. Sharing information, so if a scam is out there in the field, if we get a report of a scam anywhere in Australia and wherever it’s reported, it will be fed into the National Anti‑Scam Centre and that information will then be fed on in real time through to the banks, through to the telecommunications companies and through to the social media platforms, and we’ll be expecting them to act on that information.
So if you know there’s a scam bank account being used, for example, when that information is provided through to the banks, an obligation on the bank to put a flag on that and to act on it. Information‑sharing in real time is critical, because if somebody – if there’s a gang out there targeting one victim, they’ll also be going for hundreds of others as well. So sharing – reporting and sharing that information in real time, absolutely critical.
So disruption, education and information‑sharing, but also providing more support to victims through the arrangements we’ve set up through Scamwatch and the ACCC and through IDCARE, which is a fantastic community‑based organisation which the Albanese government is providing funding to, they’ll be able to be referred through from the National Anti‑Scam Centre to IDCARE to provide support and assistance to people who have had their IDs stolen or counterfeited and, if they’ve been scammed, helping victims get their information and their lives back together again.
So disruption, education and information, and assistance to victims, all critical parts of the National Anti‑Scam Centre’s processes. In addition to that, we understand that this has got to be a whole‑of‑government and whole‑of‑economy effort. So over the next few months we’ll be working to put in place tough new codes of practice to ensure that in the area of banks, for example, that everybody understands what their obligations are. We’re going to lift the bar to ensure that there are new obligations upon banks and other finance institutions to ensure that they are doing their bit to help Australians – households and small businesses – take the fight up to scammers. New obligations to ensure that there’s a higher standard across our banks, higher standards in our telecommunications companies and higher standards with social media platforms as well.
And why is it important to address social media platforms and telecommunications companies? Well, they’re the vectors. They are the channels through which the scammers are attacking Australians. So the work that I’m doing with my colleague Michelle Rowland to ensure that there is a new SMS registry to ensure that we know and are able to block those damaging SMS messages that are coming through attacking victims, we know that the vast majority of attacks at the moment are coming through SMS messages – those annoying scam messages that are driving Australians nuts. We’re blocking about 9 million of them every six months at the moment and we want to lift that up to ensure that we’ve got a higher standard. Fewer of those messages coming through means fewer attacks on Australians and fewer vulnerable people left with those confusing, annoying and dangerous messages.
In the social media platforms we also know that this is an important area. Action needs to be taken here as well. We’ve got to ensure that platforms are doing their bit to ensure that this dangerous and criminal activity, particularly in the area of investment scams is being attacked at source.
We know that we’re not going to be able to travel to every jurisdiction around – every other country around the world, sometimes in unfriendly jurisdictions where the scammers are operating out of. So our strategy is about protecting Australians here at home. Putting up the walls to ensure we’re putting in barriers between the communications, the attack that are coming through on telecommunications networks, through social media platforms to ensure fewer of this stuff is getting through in the first place. The disruption activity, ensuring that we are going over – after the organisations that are doing this. The education and information‑sharing and the victim support, all a part of a whole‑of‑government strategy.
For too long the scammers have had it their way. Well, from today that changes. We’re taking the fight up to them.
I’ll take a few questions in a moment, but I also want to take the opportunity to say a few words about some comments that I’ve seen the opposition making today in relation to economic strategy.
We’re delighted that through the first 12 months of the Albanese government we’ve been able to put the budget back into a stronger position. Stronger revenues coming through means we can do more to pay down the debt – the trillion dollars worth of debt that the government inherited from the Coalition. Bringing the budget back into balance is a critical part of our strategy in dealing with those long‑term economic pressures, a critical part of the government’s strategy.
So we’re delighted that revenue is stronger and that the tax receipts and commodities revenue is stronger than we first anticipated. In previous years Coalition governments have taken that revenue and spent it as if there was no tomorrow. We’re not going to do that. And in our first two budgets over 87 per cent of new revenue has been banked and is ensuring that we are paying down that debt that we’ve inherited. And that makes our budget stronger, but it also ensures that when we are facing into really difficult particularly international economic head winds, that the budget is stronger and the government is in a better and a stronger position to protect Australians and to ensure that we are well placed to withstand the challenges ahead.
We’ve got a practical, active process and we’ve got policies in place which are meeting these challenges – and they’re working. From 1 July we’ve got new packages of measures that are already commencing – cheaper child care, support for households and small businesses dealing with energy price increases. Our energy bill relief package comes into effect from today. So across the economy we are looking at practical ways that we can support households and small businesses, at the same time ensuring that we don’t make a bad situation worse.
We think inflation is on the turn, but it requires the government to be disciplined – and we are – to ensure that we can lock in the gains that we are making and ensure that over the medium term we see the economic recovery that everyone is hoping for.
So with those initial remarks I’d invite Catriona Lowe, Deputy Chair of the ACCC, to make some remarks. Thank you.
CATRIONA LOWE:
Thank you, Minister. Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be here this morning to launch the first fusion cell of the National Anti‑Scam Centre. As the Assistant Treasurer has just noted, Australians are losing billions of dollars every year to scams, and this figure continues to increase. As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it’s clear that a coordinated response is required across government, across regulators, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams effectively.
This coordination will be the role of the National Anti‑Scam Centre. We’ve chosen investment scams as the first target of our first fusion cell because they are causing the highest level of reported losses to consumers, costing Australians more than $1 billion last year and causing emotional devastation to their victims. This is why the National Anti‑Scam Centre is prioritising disrupting investment scams for its first fusion cell.
The fusion cell approach allows us to bring together expertise from across government and industry, taking timely and direct action to address specific types of scams that require our urgent attention due to their significant impact on Australians. Another way of thinking of a fusion cell is a time‑limited taskforce.
Together, the ACCC and ASIC will lead the investments scam fusion cell working with representatives from banks, telecommunications companies and digital platforms to disrupt investment scams and stop criminals reaching their victims.
The fusion cell will run for initially six months and we will release updates to the public on its outcomes via the National Anti‑Scam Centre. Information‑sharing with the private sector will also be a priority for the fusion cell to better inform businesses where the weak points exist and the actions that they need to take to disrupt scams. We’ll also inform the public of what to look out for so that they can avoid falling victim to investment scam.
This will be the first in a series of fusion cells that the National Anti‑Scam Centre will coordinate with future fusion cells to include different participants relevant to target the specific different scam types. This work will be important in helping to stop scammers and better protect consumers and businesses into the future.
However, the threat of scams is being felt by Australians today. We urge consumers to be suspicious of anyone offering big profits, guaranteed returns, unique opportunities or time‑limited offers. The National Anti‑Scam Centre will allow for a more targeted approach to disrupt scammers and ultimately help reduce the threat and the impact of scams for consumers and businesses. Thank you.
DANIELLE PRESS:
Thank you. And I’d like to thank the Assistant Treasurer and Deputy Chair Lowe for the opportunity to speak here today as well. ASIC welcomes the announcement of the National Anti‑Scams Centre and commends the government for providing funding to this incredibly important initiative.
As we’ve said today, investment scams are about half of the scams in Australia and it’s a blight on the Australian economy. Combating and disrupting these investment scams has been a strategic priority for ASIC for some time, and addressing a problem of this scale requires regulators, private sector and others to work closely together. It’s a national economic problem and it requires a whole‑of‑government and a whole‑of‑private sector ecosystem response.
We’ve done significant work in this area already. In April this year we released findings of a report into the responses of the major banks into scams activities, and we were somewhat troubled by what we found. The overall approach to scam strategy and the governance of Australia’s major banks has been variable and overall losses – and have some been less mature than others. Scam victims were not always reported well by the banks. We are calling on the banking sector to do better, to improve their approaches and to deal with scams.
Last year we also took part in a trial to use some technology to quickly remove investment scam websites from the internet. We are very pleased that the government has committed to this funding to turn this trial into a permanent service and we will do more and will be saying more about this over coming weeks.
Today’s announcement provides the opportunity to call again on the private sector to consider how they help to protect Australians from scams. Addressing this problem is a critical task for all of corporate Australia, including financial institutions, technology companies, digital platforms and other organisations. All of us need to work together to stop scams. We are very, very excited to be part of the National Anti‑Scams Commission.
JONES:
Thanks guys. Happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST:
How many people form part of the cell, and will they be working full time on this?
JONES:
Catriona, do you want to talk about some of those technical details.
LOWE:
So we’ll be issuing invitations to participate in the cell in coming days. And we will have exactly no more and no less than the experts we need around the table to solve the problem. It will vary depending on the nature of the intervention that we’re undertaking.
JOURNALIST:
Can you be specific about the kinds of industries or sectors, departments, they will be drawn from?
LOWE:
So the initial group will be drawn from ourselves and ASIC obviously as well as banks and telecommunications company, but critically once we’ve got the initial people around the table we want to draw on their expertise to make sure that all of the right people will be around the table. So we’ll have an initial grouping, but we will be open to adding expertise that are going to help us target the problem. We’ve got an open mind about how we solve this problem. That’s the nature of a fusion cell – it will be agile, depending on what we identify as the best techniques to interrupt the scams.
JOURNALIST:
Minister, just you said that the focus is – will be on protecting Australians here at home. We know particularly with investment scams frequently victims say that, you know, even if they report it within hours of being scammed by that time it’s too late, the money has been moved overseas. What powers will the cell have essentially to pursue those kinds of leads in other countries?
JONES:
Sure. So this is day one, and information‑sharing and acting on that information in real time is critical. So as soon as something is reported, that then gets passed on to the relevant banks – which will be all of them, frankly because if a scammer is attacking one victim they’ll be attacking hundreds of others at the same time and they’ll have different banks. So passing and sharing that information on to all of the banks in real time, absolutely critical.
I do want to make this point: what we’re doing in scams and consumer fraud is one part of a whole‑of‑government approach to these sorts of economic crimes. So you would have seen my colleagues Clare O’Neil and the Attorney‑General Mark Dreyfus working together on our cyber security strategy. And that is as much about protecting our networks as it is working with other jurisdictions in other countries to ensure that we’re going after the criminal gangs in other countries as well who are trying to attack our cyber security.
I often use the analogy to describe the difference between the cyber defence and the scam stuff like this: a cyber attack is when somebody breaks into your house and tries to steal your stuff; a scam is when somebody opens the front door and let’s that person in. And you’re going to use a different approach and a different set of strategies if you’re dealing with a cyber attack to dealing with a fraud.
So the fraud, the National Anti‑Scam Centre is about dealing with the second of those. We’re trying to provide all the protections to consumers to stop those scam attacks coming in there in the first place and uplifting their knowledge and their information to ensure that they don’t willingly open the door and let the criminals in. And obviously if something does go wrong, ensuring that there’s more victim support on the other side of it. But our objective ‑ stopping them getting in in the first place – is the critical part of this strategy.
JOURNALIST:
Can you elaborate further on that? As how the cell will be preventing scammers, you know, other than, I guess, educating the public?
JONES:
As the Deputy Chair has just said, the cell is going to bring together the expertise that currently exists but is not working together. So today we will have literally thousands and thousands of people working in banks, superannuation companies, insurance companies, telcos, social media platforms, working in their own area identifying and attempting to take down stuff. And we’re looking at blocking material that’s coming through or trying to respond quickly or after the event when they see a scam occurring. What’s not happening at the moment is bringing a cooperative effort and having that information shared in real time. And what’s not happening at the moment is getting everyone working together on a proactive strategy.
So we want to bring some of those people who are currently working in banks, for example, on anti‑fraud strategies, bring them together with telecommunications fraud experts, the great work that our regulators and our police are doing, for example, to ensure that we are bringing the experts together and asking the question: what are we seeing, what are they doing, how are they doing it, and how can we put in place an alternative strategy to take them on. That’s what the taskforce, the fusion cells, will be doing. Why investment scams? Because it’s the biggest part of a very big problem.
JOURNALIST:
You mentioned a key part of this being those standards for banks. One of the major problems at the moment is kind of the lack of friction, I guess, or slowness in the payments. So, you know, you have cases where there’s payments made for massive amounts and despite the fact that it’s the first payment, it does go through relatively quickly and then it’s too late essentially. Isn’t what’s really needed here more action from the banks on, I guess, monitoring those kind of unusual transactions?
JONES:
We’re going to have to put more friction in the system. It’s as simple as that. I mean, the whole trend of commerce over the last two decades has been instantaneous money movements. Consumer can tap and go. They can from their mobile phone make a transfer of funds. And what we need to do is put a little bit more friction in the system, particularly if something looks suss – an out‑of‑character transaction, an attempted transaction to a known scam or criminal‑involved account, transfers between money and cryptocurrency platforms. We’re going to be looking at all of these things because we are looking at the ecology of the scams, looking at the ecosystem of the scams and saying what do we need to do to make it much more difficult for money to move around and the opaque movement of money and the instantaneous movement of money, which is a scammer’s paradise.
So to consumers I say: yes, this may mean in some instances money moves more slowly. But that’s a lot better than losing a lot of money in a very short period of time.
JOURNALIST:
Is there a website yet or is there some kind of public contact established yet where people can make the calls?
JONES:
Scamwatch will be the single portal. It’s a great brand name; Australians know about it. They will often – if they see an unsolicited email or an SMS, Australians in their thousands are already going on to Scamwatch to see whether this is a legitimate message or a legitimate investment. We’re going to take this to a whole new level.
And I want to make this point – I think it’s an important one: we have seen close, I think, Catriona, to a quarter of a million reports to Scamwatch in the last 12 months. We expect that number to go up. A quarter of a million is a big number. We expect the number to go up over the next 12 months because we know that that quarter of a million reports is only the tip of the iceberg because for lots of reasons people don’t report the scams. Lots of reasons.
We’re actually encouraging Australians to report the scams because without that information we can’t go after the criminals who are doing this. So we need you to report. And as a result of these calls and as a result of the additional pressure and additional focus the Albanese government is putting on this we expect over the next period scam reports to go up. And on the basis of that increased reportage we’ll have more data and more information to go after the crooks who are involved in ripping off Australians to the tune of $3 billion a year.
JOURNALIST:
And looking ahead, I guess, do you have – are there specific KPIs? I mean, what will success look like? How will it be measured, say, after six or 12 months?
JONES:
We want to reduce the amount of losses and average losses that Australians are encountering. We want to ensure that Australians can do their commerce online with confidence. We want to ensure that Australians have faith in their banking institutions and their telecommunications companies and the social media platforms and that stuff that they’re seeing online is true and real and reliable. But we know we’re not there yet. We know we’ve got a long journey, and we know that every time we put a strategy in place these criminals will try and move fast to put a different strategy in place. Which is why, as the Deputy Chair has said, us being nimble and having a strategy which is continually rolling forward and looking at and mimicking the strategies of the criminals and taking them on is absolutely critical.
We could pass a whole heap of new laws today and I could guarantee you that within a week the criminal networks would find a way around it. So that’s why this nimble approach, the taskforce that we are going to set up which are targeting the scams that are in the field, moving quickly to share the information, taking them on, collapsing and then starting a new one. Because, you know, last year it was the Hey Mum scams. Last week it was the toll scams. It’s the investment and the bond market scams. It will be the crypto scams. We’ve got to move quickly to ensure that we are as nimble as the gangs we’re going after.
JOURNALIST:
So given it’s just a dynamic environment, as you describe, is there a dollar kind of amount, a reduction, you know that you’ve got, as a goal here, or is it just less in general?
JONES:
Look, it’s a great question. One of the problems we have is we actually don’t know how much money is being lost. We think it’s about $3 billion. In reality it’s probably more than that because so much of this goes unreported. And I’m not going to set the government an unrealistic task or an unrealistic target. This is the first time this has been done. Probably anywhere in the world this is the first time this has been done. So we’ll learn as we go over the course of the next year to ensure that we can get the learnings and the strategies that work. But for me, ensuring that Australians are less vulnerable, are more supported and that we have raised the bar across our banks, our telecommunications companies and social media platforms, that’s a metric of success – ensuring that we have raised the standard over the next 12 months to ensure that everybody is doing their bit and working together. That’s a metric of success.
JOURNALIST:
What about websites hosted overseas? Will that be more of a whack‑a‑mole approach? What kind of authority, I guess, will the government have to do that kind of thing?
JONES:
Look, a lot of this stuff in the world of AI is computer generated. So when I talk to the people over at Google they tell me that literally millions of these things are being created on an annual basis and we’re continually trying to chase them and pull them down. So we’ve got some stuff that we’ll be talking about in the very near future, Danielle, about some work that ASIC is working on to go after in particular the investment scams and those fake websites. They are definitely a target. But we want the social media platforms to do more as well. They have some of the best AI in the world. We want them to be turning that AI on the criminals that are preying on Australians.
JOURNALIST:
Most people when, you know, you say “centre” they imagine a physical building. This is a virtual centre. Can you kind of elaborate: what does that mean and how will they collaborate?
JONES:
It means bring the experts together wherever they reside. So we’ve got – if we’ve got the best person on bank fraud living in Sydney and, you know, the best person who’s working on social media vectors living in Adelaide, we don’t want distance to be a barrier to them working together. So that’s why post pandemic, you know, remote working, it’s the way of the world. We want to focus on the activity, not a particular location where people are working.
JOURNALIST:
Just a final one: it might be for the Commissioner Press, actually, ACCC specific.
CATRIONA LOWE:
ACCC – you want me, I think.
JOURNALIST:
Sorry, yes, yes. I’m sorry. You’ve said that most of the funding is set up for technological capabilities. Can you give some detail about what those are?
LOWE:
Look, it’s very early days in a multi‑year technology project. But the way I think about it is really there’s a whole range of data sources that already exist. Banks have got some data, Scamwatch has got some data. We want to build a series of pipes between those different sources of data to enable that high frequently data sharing that the minister has spoken about. And in the interim we’ll be ramping up our efforts on the existing way that data is shared, which is largely a manual process between the different actors in the ecosystem.
JOURNALIST:
And finally – ASIC – can you just explain a little bit on what your kind of focus will be in relation to investment scams in particular?
PRESS:
So we are looking at scams where the returns that are offered are too good to be true, where they’re offered by people who are not licensed in Australia, where they’re offered by just, you know, random – the randomness of some of these scams that are there. So we’re really looking for the things that look too good to be true, that are, you know, just not going to return to consumers. I would encourage consumers to look at MoneySmart, to think about how you detect an investment scam, because there are some very obvious signs that something is not quite right. So they’re the type of things that we’re looking at. And very much looking at those websites that are not offered by licensed financial services licensees and trying to take those down before they can reach consumers.
JONES:
Thanks, guys.