Monique Ryan
Kooyong · Independent · Australia
“I second this motion and commend the member for Curtin's motion to refer the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 to the House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs. This should not be a controversial request.”
“What about the clinicians, the researchers, the public health experts and the community organisations who have spent years documenting the devastating impact of gambling addiction? Some of them have been given days to review this complex legislation and provide feedback on it to a very limited extent.”
“After this sort of delay, the government has no excuses for not getting this legislation right. But it's rushing to introduce legislation that has been denied input from the public.”
“They're special relationships, the glue that holds us together. For Emily, Matt and Lucy, Noah and Maia, Millie and Rory—I know you share those special relationships and I know that they'll continue. I know that Rich knew that too. Parkrun is something we all do together. It's really symbolic of Rich.”
“We were fortunate to have people in our lives who gave us a sense of what was possible—doctors, engineers, teachers and scientists. We learnt the importance and the wonder of learning and science. There was always plenty of sport. We participated in everything, but particularly footy.”
“The government has not responded to that recommendation appropriately. Its proposals fall well short of that. There are ongoing and serious questions about the extent to which this legislation will provide any support or any protections for children and for vulnerable Australians.”
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“Australia's Jewish community felt the loss, the shock and the horror of October 7 immediately and profoundly. For so many, these events have affected their family members, their friends and their loved ones in Australia but also in Israel. In recent months, the increasing wave of antisemitism in this country has compounded their trauma and their grief. Australian Jews have had to deal with racially based hatred of a degree and an extent previously unknown to them, although many have told me that antisemitism is, sadly, not new to them.”
“Despite that promise, the Prime Minister indicated during this term that the government would not proceed with that religious discrimination reform without bipartisan support, and it has not done so. I felt that that was appropriate. I think that bipartisan support is really important for these important pieces of public policy, which brings us to this legislation, the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024, aimed as it is at combating the increasing antisemitism and Islamophobia which have been evident in Australian society since 7 October 2023. The last 16 months have been a time of untold tragedy in the Middle East. The actions of Hamas on 7 October 2023, and the subsequent response by the Israeli government, have resulted in enormous human loss and suffering in Israel, in Gaza and in the other occupied territories.”
“All democratic governments have to balance the freedom to express cultural and religious opinions with the competing need to ensure their citizens' freedom from discrimination. I'm concerned that, given the time pressures on this parliament, the Albanese government is rushing consideration of a really difficult and complex piece of legislation and, in doing so, has doomed this legislation to outlaw hate crimes in this country to failure. Between 2017 and 2021, under the previous government, we saw a series of inquiries and proposals to introduce protections against religious discrimination. That process ended with the unsuccessful Religious Discrimination Bill 2022. At the last election, this government promised to introduce legal protections for religious beliefs but also to legislate to protect teachers and students from discrimination.”
“But it provides only half of the picture. We could do much better. Firstly, the government's SMS sender ID registry should be mandatory rather than voluntary. Secondly, the government should reverse the onus of proof for scams restitution—to institutions and away from individuals. Only by doing so can we maximise consumer protections and the incentives for institutions to improve their systems to stop scams and protect Australians from financial harm.”
“It would reduce the scam complaints process from as much as two years under the framework proposed in this bill to just a few weeks, with consumers, government regulators, dispute resolution bodies and businesses all set to benefit from the efficiency gained and the reduction in costs. This country urgently needs a robust, well-enforced framework of consumer protections. For far too long, too many Australians have lost life-changing sums of money to scammers. For far too long, the businesses enabling scammers to conduct their activities have faced no consequences, leaving consumers to carry the burden of those crimes. It's a simple premise: consumers should be able to get their money back when businesses fail to protect them from scams. This framework is well intentioned. It sets the scene for meaningful protection from scams.”
“There would be limits to the presumption of reimbursement; for example, it would not be instituted where there is evidence of gross negligence or where a person knowingly took part in fraud. There would also be a backup option of a single-door external dispute resolution by AFCA where reimbursement is denied. The banks, telcos and digital platforms would then undertake apportionment after the consumer is reimbursed. That apportionment would be business-to-business at an industry level between SPF entities. The model would create an incentive to drive industry action to innovate and invest in the technology and systems required to prevent scams.”
“It would significantly ease the burden on consumers by removing the onus to prosecute their case against multiple multinational corporations over what would likely be years-long disputes. Enabling faster reimbursements for scams victims would incentivise much more investment in scams protections. The Consumer Action Law Centre and other expert groups have suggested an alternative model—a modified reimbursement framework which would lead the world on scams disruption and responses. This would be predicated on a presumption of bank reimbursement. In the model, the consumer would provide reasonable information to the bank. The bank would have five to 10 days to respond, and, in most cases, would then reimburse the scam victim.”
“A consumer receives an SMS saying they have an overdue toll. The consumer thinks it's genuine because they travelled on a toll road two days before. They hit the link in the message and get scammed. Who's at fault? Is it the bank? Is it the telco? Is it the tolling company who sold the consumer's travel data through real-time bidding? Or is it the data broker? How is an individual to work through this issue? The reality is that, in most cases, they won't; they'll drop the issue and pay the money, and the scammer will continue unpunished. The reality is that, without a presumption of reimbursement, there is no economic incentive for banks to improve their systems to prevent scams. A change to the Scams Protection Framework to introduce a presumption of reimbursement, within limits, would help the framework meet its stated objectives.”
“Consumer advocacy groups say the process will include a person reporting the scam, lodging a complaint with the companies involved, seeking advice, escalating the dispute to AFCA, participating in meetings and then getting an outcome—a process which could involve as many as 30 steps and take as long as two years. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman agrees; she says it is not reasonable that consumers have to jump through all those hoops while watching regulated entities blame each other for their failings. It's also unclear how apportionment could work in this context. There could well be protracted arguments, even litigation, between banks, telcos and digital platforms about which entity caused the loss and who is responsible for how much of the liability—all while the victim waits. Take a toll scam.”
“It places the onus on scam victims to prove, presumably on the balance of probabilities, that the bank, the platforms and/or the telcos involved failed to meet their subjective and quite broad obligations under the Scams Protection Framework principles and codes, that the business's failure was the cause of the scam and that the scammer intended to deceive the victim. The problem is that, in many cases, the consumer has no access to the information required to prove the case. Banks refuse to hand over information at this point. Meta won't hand over its algorithms, and banks often won't release commercial-in-confidence data and systems. Given this information asymmetry, the task will likely be onerous and challenging for many individuals, especially older Australians and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.”
“Nine senior consumer groups, including the Consumer Action Law Centre, CHOICE, the Financial Rights Legal Centre and Financial Counselling Australia, have repeatedly called for the Albanese government to adopt a modified version of the UK reforms. The government's proposed Scams Protection Framework is well-intentioned and is a step in the right direction, but it falls down on this question of dispute resolution, which is, after all, the touchstone of protection from scams. The legislation sets up an unnecessarily complex multiparty case-by-case dispute resolution system. It would likely incentivise the industry to enforce a minimum standard compliance approach to obligations.”
“The legislation provides for criminal and civil penalties if the legislation is breached. It is very disappointing that the government has decided not to go ahead with the recommendation from experts and consumer groups that we follow the United Kingdom's approach of making banks primarily responsible for dispute resolution relating to scams. Since 2019, the United Kingdom has had a voluntary reimbursement model in place, which has recently become compulsory. Under the scheme, victims are protected while the industry has a financial incentive to improve its scam protection systems. Australian banks have claimed this approach would make us a honey pot for scammers, but that claim has been rejected by the UK regulator and by some banks.”
“It also applies to the digital platform service providers. Scam victims will be able to seek compensation from digital platforms and from telcos, as well as the sending and receiving bank. But they will have to do that by taking their case to the ombudsman, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, or AFCA. In doing so, they can theoretically take a single action against multiple parties—banks, telcos and digital platforms, depending on the scam. The current maximal payout for a scam to be received by a consumer from AFCA is about $1.2 million. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or the ACCC, will oversee enforcement of this framework. Companies failing to meet their obligations face massive fines of up to $50 million, and they could be forced to compensate victims.”
“After being informed of a scam, banks will have to report it to the authorities, and they will have to respond quickly, such as to stop payments going through. They will be required to identify and shut down money mule accounts used to receive and shift scam victims' money, usually offshore. We know that failure to do this has been a failure of many banks for some years. I've had a number of constituents contact me with horror stories related to our big and small banks, their willingness to transfer money too quickly, their inability to recover losses after the fact and the challenges of dealing with their networks. This framework also covers telecommunication providers, telcos, who are required to ascertain who is sending text messages. They're required to block numbers making scam calls.”
“The first sectors to be designated under the Scams Prevention Framework will be banks, telecommunication providers and providers of digital platform services relating to social media, paid search engine advertising and direct messaging. Other sectors will be considered in time. Under the legislation, banks will need confirmation-of-payee technology so that customers can check account names and other details to ensure that they're paying their money into the right bank account, and they will receive a warning if those details do not match. The Australian Banking Association says that this could be in place for all banks within 2025, although it is unclear why we can't have it immediately.”
“That led to a loss of millions of dollars by Australians, some of whom live in the electorate that I represent, Kooyong. It is for this reason that the government is introducing mandatory industry codes for scam protection and detection and victim support and redress by banks, telcos and digital platforms. The government claims that, under this legislation, scam victims will have a straightforward path to securing compensation after a single complaint, even when their complaint involves multiple companies. The liability will theoretically be shared between the sending and receiving banks, digital platform and telco provider, depending on the scam.”
“Recent initiatives by this government have included the National Anti-Scam Centre, launching the SMS ID register and boosting ASIC's scam-disruption activities. These measures have decreased investment scams, but those on social media platforms continue to increase. Digital platforms, telcos and banks have not done enough to limit those losses. For example, the SMS ID registry needs to be mandatory. In Singapore, we've seen that a mandatory ID registry led to a 67 per cent reduction in scams. We have seen in this country what happens when institutions don't act on spoofed phone numbers. Probably the best example of that was HSBC's reckless and indifferent failure to respond to spoofing of many hundreds of Australians over many months.”
“The reality is that for years the banks, telcos and digital companies have not taken the necessary steps to adequately protect customers. Australians have had to continue to experience serious financial and security harm in the face of this failed self-regulation. There is now a critical need for government and businesses to act effectively and with purpose to protect consumers from these increasingly devious and sophisticated schemes. The Albanese government has taken a proactive stance to scams prevention, and it is appropriate to acknowledge the efforts of the Assistant Treasurer and his team and their deep engagement in this space. I have to say, as the co-chair and founder of the Parliamentary Friends of Scams Protection, that the Assistant Treasurer has been supportive and responsive, and I thank him for that.”
“Almost 50 per cent of people affected by larger scale scams report them to their banks, but, critically, only 8.7 per cent report them to government organisations or departments. So the government's figures do not include scams that individuals only report their banks, to the telcos, to the police or to other government agencies like ASIC, the ACMA or the ATO. That means the figure we're given and often use—of almost $3 billion lost to scams in Australia last year—is more than likely a vast underestimation. There are many reasons for the increasing prevalence of scams. The rapid digitalisation of the economy has had a dual edge. While online facilities and online banking have enhanced many of our individual conveniences, they have also facilitated the rise of scams.”
“Australia is a honeypot for scams. Our lack of regulation and industry protection for consumers permitted more than 600,000 scams in 2023, a record number and an increase of 18.5 per cent on the previous year according to the ACCC. The National Anti-Scam Centre tells us that Australians lost $2.74 billion to scams in 2023, but its data is limited because it tells us only about those scams which have actually been reported to the ACCC's Scamwatch unit. Probably the best data is that from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which, frustratingly, collects a much different dataset to that of the ACCC. The ABS reports that most scams are relatively low value, of the order of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. It seems quite likely that scams of that size are underreported.”
“Deputy Speaker, Assistant Minister, we have to do better to protect vulnerable Australians and to ensure that they receive the very best practice care in our country. At the very least, as a show of good faith in the face of our apparent inability to guarantee access to the optimal medications for these patients' conditions, we have to ensure that Australian patients don't have to pay more to receive lesser medical care.”
“I call for the government to use Future Made in Australia or other funding to invest in incentives for the development of a domestic manufacturing industry for critical medicines; to introduce taxation or fiscal incentives to ensure supply of critical medications which might not otherwise be financially viable to introduce into the small Australian market; to review the system of statutory price reductions for older medications so as to temper the price reductions that often lead to PBS delisting; to simplify the special access scheme for unapproved medicines and therapeutic goods; and to enhance the regulatory powers of the TGA to enable it to redistribute scarce medicines to priority patient groups who are at risk of poorer health outcomes.”
“I'm particularly concerned by the cost of the medication shortages for consumers and the fact that Australians often have to pay more for a second-line or third-line agent. I call on the government to act on this issue: to develop effective stockpiles of critical medicines; to mandate that medication manufacturers advise the TGA of shortages well in advance; and to ensure that we have duplication of registration by the TGA for those medicines which are critical to public health and safety.”
“The legislation in front of the House addresses one part of one aspect of an issue, but it doesn't get to the underlying problem, which is the persisting deficits in the supply chain for many medications in this country; the lack of transparency around those shortages for consumers, doctors and pharmacists; and the inconvenience, the expense and the harm which result from those shortages. We need a better process to identify impending shortages of medications, biologics and devices. Doctors and pharmacists need to know about these shortages and discontinuations sooner. They need greater transparency about the reasons for medication shortages and consistent, location-specific information about stock availability.”
“Pharmacists know when medications are in short supply in their own facilities, but they don't know which nearby stores will have the medication that might be able to help them. They tell me that they spend hours sometimes calling out to try and help their patients. Some time ago I suggested to the government that it look to establishing a central information point for pharmacists so that they could know what medications are in supply in what sites and save themselves time. Clearly, there are some commercial sensitivities around knowing which pharmacies have what medications, but we could get around these. As far as I know, there has been no progress on this issue from the government to date.”
“Communication around medication shortages is often poor. Many GPs find out that medications are in shortage from their patients. The frustration relating to medication shortages reduces consumer credibility and trust in healthcare professionals. Many have reported higher rates of physical and verbal abuse when their patients are unable to source the medications that they need. GPs would benefit from collaborative efforts of the TGA, medication suppliers and practice management software producers, who could together relatively easily provide online advice in practice management software regarding discontinuations and supply of the medications that the GPs are prescribing. But the government has not as yet made an effort to put that in place.”
“He was unable to source that medication in the community. He had to go to the emergency department with uncontrolled breathlessness. He was admitted to hospital, where he died. A 56-year-old woman with metastatic lung cancer who was stable on long-acting hydromorphone for pain was forced to change to methadone because the hydromorphone was no longer available. She required a two-week hospital admission to titrate her medications to safety. An 85-year-old man with metastatic bowel cancer was admitted to hospital for three weeks due to the need for slow titration onto methadone in lieu of long-acting hydromorphone. A 73-year-old man with end-stage cardiac disease had to attend a hospital palliative care clinic in person for the ongoing prescription and supply of his MS Contin granules because he was unable to source them in the community.”
“At the same time, the recent discontinuation of lomustine capsules sparked a lot of concern in the Australian oncology community. There are very limited alternatives for treatment of glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer. Taking away one of those alternatives just causes incredible distress to vulnerable Australians. Worst of all, I want to draw the parliament's attention to the ongoing critical shortages of medications for palliative care in this country. Liquid morphine has been in shortage for months. I'll give you a few examples of the impact of that shortage on constituents from Kooyong. These are examples provided by my constituents. An 88-year-old gentleman had prostate cancer. He was stable on oral liquid morphine for breathlessness due to his metastatic disease.”
“Last year there were persistent shortages of the diabetes medication Mounjaro. The long-term national shortage of semaglutide is likely to persist until at least 31 December this year, and that is impacting patients with type 2 diabetes across this country. Finding it and accessing semaglutide, or Ozempic, has been described as being like winning the lottery. I've also heard from a constituent in Kooyong about their anxiety and fear relating to the shortage of cholestyramine powder sachets. These are used as a last-line therapy for people who have undergone an ileal resection and are at risk of severe diarrhoea related to that. There are very limited alternatives for people with that condition. We have a duty to guarantee vulnerable Australians appropriate treatment for their serious medical conditions.”
“Hormone replacement therapy transdermal patches have been in chronic supply for some years. I have explained to the health minister on a number of occasions that it is a very brave man who gets between a menopausal woman and her HRT, yet the TGA has now advised doctors to limit starting new patients on HRT patches, accepting that this will help preserve available supplies for those people who are already on them. This is what our health system is reduced to. Similarly, copper IUDs have been in critical shortage for months at a time. Patients themselves have had to arrange to get them delivered from interstate. The HIV prevention drug PrEP has been in shortage for long periods. We have people at risk of developing HIV because we are not providing them with the medication that they need.”
“For patients and for pharmacists, uneven and inadequate distribution of medicines is a health equity problem. Delays in accessing or inability to access the best possible medication affects patients negatively. Withdrawal from medications causes side effects that affect patients negatively. Changes in medications can well result in inadvertent overdoses or unexpected side effects. Where alternative medications have to be sourced, that increases the workload of pharmacists. Patients often experience the extra cost associated with these new drugs, but they also have to pay to go back and see their GP when they have to get a second prescription because they can't access the first-choice medication. The medications affected are often those which are in common use: medications for ADHD and antibiotics.”
“They may also have diminished capacity to advocate for alternative scripts, to find the remaining supplies of medications and to source them privately. Medication shortages don't just cause inconvenience. For doctors, they result in a need for extra consultations, to identify alternative management options, to write additional or new scripts, to educate patients about the new medications and provide those patients with psychological support around the change, to organise collection or dispensation of new pharmacotherapies and to call pharmacies or the TGA for more information. These activities are made more time consuming when physicians are unfamiliar with alternative preparations or when those new agents require either authority scripts or access via the Special Access Scheme, the paperwork for which is considerable.”
“Clearly, this can result in adverse outcomes for patients. Fourteen per cent of patients who try to find a medication and can't find it end up not buying it at all. Four per cent purchase a non-prescription medicine, and two per cent of them end up in hospital. I'll repeat that—one in 50 Australians affected by medication shortages ends up in our hospital system. These shortages and discontinuations disproportionately impact certain population groups, including First Nations people and Australians living in rural and regional settings. We know that Australians with higher incidences of chronic and complex diseases are those who are more likely to require specialist care. They are more vulnerable to shortages and to discontinuations.”
“It was launched in July 2023, and it requires manufacturers to hold at least four to six months of key medications in Australia. However, it has not been enforced. All we are being given with this legislation is a minimal increase in our degree of preparedness for what we seem to be accepting as an inevitable occurrence. It's just not good enough. There are clearly no easy answers to this issue, but there are a number of things which the government could do and yet has not yet done to address the problem. A recent report, Understanding the impact of medicine shortages in Australia , found that many Australian patients have to wait a month or more to purchase medicines which are in shortage or they end up having to buy a second medication. As a result of that, 20 per cent of Australians ration their medicines to make them last longer.”
“The amendment before the House today gives similar powers to the secretary where there is an anticipated shortage of these registered goods. It's important to note that substitutable overseas goods are often in limited supply overseas, and they are often the subject of significant competition between countries which are seeking to secure supplies for their citizens. So this amendment will enable the secretary to try to secure and ensure ongoing supplies of necessary medications for Australians ahead of time, before we get to the situation where the medications are already in short supply. The fact is that the government lacks a comprehensive strategy addressing these medication shortages and how to manage them better when they do occur. We have a medicines supply security guarantee.”
“This longstanding problem was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, sequelae of which included increased production costs and increasingly complex logistic challenges. But these issues are and remain compounded by a lack of Australian domestic manufacturers. More than 90 per cent of the medications that we prescribe in this country are imported, most commonly from India and from China. There is already an existing mechanism in the Therapeutic Goods Act to allow the secretary of the department to approve the importation or supply of substitutable unapproved products from overseas where the secretary is satisfied that the approved medicine or biological or medical device is already unavailable or is in short supply.”
“The fact is that we lack appropriate mechanisms in this country for anticipating or dealing appropriately with medication shortages. Today, the TGA lists 416 medication shortages and 67 anticipated shortages on its website. It receives an average of 120 notifications of new medical shortages every month, at least 10 per cent of which are critical. Last year, we had a national shortage of intravenous fluids for months. This was a shortage which the health minister himself admitted he did not see coming. It was a shortage which necessitated postponement of hundreds of elective surgeries and which prolonged inpatient stays in hospitals around Australia. Medication shortages are a global problem. The WHO recently reported 300 essential drugs in shortage worldwide.”
“The Health Legislation Amendment (Improved Medicare Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 proposes amendments to improve enforcement of several integrity measures for Medicare, some minor amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and amendments related to the government's tobacco and vaping reforms. I'd like to speak to the changes to the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, which the government hopes will enhance its capacity to manage and alleviate the consequences of therapeutic goods shortages in Australia. Medication shortages have been a significant and ongoing issue in this country for a number of years. I have drawn attention to this issue in question time on several occasions and in questions on notice to the minister.”