Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to congratulate the government on its commitment to prioritise cybersecurity initiatives, and particularly thank the member for Fisher for bringing this motion to this place. I also acknowledge the very real need to continue to invest in public education to prevent international scams, cybercrimes and identity theft.

One recent case of identity takeover, or theft, in my community involved a small businessman whose email system was infiltrated and monitored by a criminal for several months before $80,000 worth of fake invoices were sent to clients, who deposited moneys into the criminal's quite legitimate bank account in Australia. This crime has had a devastating impact on a small business and on a regional community. Public education is important, but I know that my electorate would like to see more done to track down and shut down international scam operators. Whilst I appreciate that passing laws that cannot be enforced by another country is a futile exercise, many of my constituents have told me they'd rather see the Australian Federal Police cooperating with other jurisdictions to raid scammers overseas, instead of raiding Australian journalists.

As stated before in this chamber, my electorate has the oldest median age in South Australia. It's actually the sixth-oldest in the nation. The Victor Harbor and Goolwa region in particular has quite an elderly population, with an average age of 58 years, compared with the national average, which is just 37 years. Unfortunately, having an older demographic comes with some consequences for cybersecurity, because older residents are more vulnerable. Having a landline makes you more available to opportunistic phone scammers, who go fishing for vulnerable victims. Thanks to technology, scammers are able to impersonate or even hijack legitimate Australian landline numbers to trick people into believing that they are from the Australian Taxation Office or some other legitimate Australian agency. The most recent scam-call blitz in my community has been the fake NBN technician. Criminals call landlines and tell unsuspecting residents that the NBN rollout is finished and that their landline will be disconnected immediately if they don't hand over control of their computer remotely or, if there is no computer, if they don't deposit a sizeable sum of money into a bank account.

Recently, my office was contacted by a couple in their 80s who lost more than $5,000 of their life savings when they gave remote access to their computer to an NBN scammer. It is easy to do. They went to their bank and were told that because they had allowed access to the computer they had given consent and they could not get their money back. There is a legal argument that this was consent by fraud, but this couple isn't about to spend several thousand dollars that they don't have on a lawyer to try and get back $5,000. Unfortunately. this couple's case is not isolated. Last year Scamwatch received 83,247 reports of scams, with a loss of more than $30 million, in which the reporter was contacted using a telecommunications network. Of these reports, 16 per cent, nearly 14,000, were made by people aged over 65 years. Collectively they lost $7.7 million. Scamwatch says reports do not indicate any specific targeting of a particular age group but, instead, suggest scammers attempt to make contact with as many potential victims as possible by a range of communication mediums. Across all communication mediums, the age group that lost the most amount of money, a total of $24 million, was that aged 55 to 64 years. It would appear that the age groups with the least amount to lose and those with the least experience with modern technology are those most at risk.

There is book entitled The Little Black Book of Scams, which I share with my community. We share them at our country shows, at all of our community events. Can I say to all members: please have these available. Your office will be inundated with requests for them when you have them. It's about education. I call on the government to run a paid advertising campaign in mainstream media so that people know what scams there are, particularly as it's tax time. Technology is rapidly changing. We need to support people with these changes, but we also need to send a message to international criminals that they cannot target our most vulnerable with impunity.

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