Sophie Scamps
Mackellar · Independent · Australia
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Every year, more than 400 Australians die by suicide linked to gambling. That's more than 1,000 lives lost since the Murphy report was handed down.”
“I rise to speak about absolute legend Charlie Verco, the courageous 24-year-old Mackellar local and Newport surf club member who paddled towards the jaws of a shark to save Leah Stewart, who was being attacked at Coogee Beach on 13 June.”
“Charlie's actions reflect the very best of our community and the values that define Australia's surf lifesaving culture. On behalf of the northern beaches community and everyone across Australia, I'd like to thank Charlie for his courage, selflessness and unwavering commitment to serving others.”
“Music, film publishing and broadcasting already operate on licensed use of content at scale. The Copyright Act provides a clear and workable framework. Copyright is not the enemy of innovation; it is what allows creators to earn a living from their talent and their work.”
“This proposal is also reportedly linked to discussions with major AI tech firms about data centre investment in Australia. Investment must never come at the cost of Australian rights. The Albanese government must not sell out Australians to big tech.”
“Right now, we are at a critical crossroad for Australia's creative arts industry, one that may deeply harm this invaluable sector. At the recent AI summit in Sydney, the chair of the Tech Council of Australia, Scott Farquhar, called for copyright reform to encourage AI investment.”
The complete record
Every one of 506 lines we hold for Sophie Scamps, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 10 of 11.
“I second the motion. I rise in support of the member for Warringah's private member's bill, the Climate Change (National Framework for Adaptation) Bill 2025, and thank her for her tireless efforts since her election to protect our climate and environment. The threat posed by climate change is existential. We know what is coming and yet we are failing to act decisively. Extreme weather events fuelled by climate change are already destroying lives and livelihoods across Australia. So far this year in Australia, we have faced Cyclone Alfred, the most severe drought in decades in South Australia, devastating floods on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, ocean heatwaves that are causing mass bleaching of the Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs, and vast and deadly algal blooms off South Australia.”
“The allied health sector wants to work constructively with the government to fix these problems, including restoring travel allowances, setting clinically informed pricing, consulting meaningfully on foundational supports and ensuring genuine co-design with providers and participants.”
“Early sector analysis suggests that without home based physiotherapy, nearly 30 per cent of participants may require hospitalisation. There is also concern that the pricing review relied on inappropriate comparisons to Medicare and private health insurance, systems that don't reflect the complexity, duration or structure of NDIS funded consultations. Added to this is the inconsistency in how and when plans are reviewed and the delay in rolling out foundational supports. Some participants have already had funding withdrawn, despite no replacement foundational services being in place. This is causing immense distress and disrupting therapeutic continuity.”
“The sector feels undermined by pricing decisions that favour growth in the support workforce while devaluing qualified clinicians and by the fact that this has been done without adequate evaluation of the long-term impacts on participant outcomes or cost benefits. One of the most damaging changes has been the cut to travel allowances. Mobile services are already reducing coverage or shutting down, particularly in areas where services are limited. I was told that mobile allied health services are already being withdrawn from my electorate on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, leaving scant coverage. This means thousands of participants will be forced to travel to clinics, which is often impractical, inappropriate and likely to cost the NDIS more. The changes also ignore the importance of delivering therapy in homes and community settings.”
“I recently hosted a roundtable with allied health providers in my electorate of Mackellar. They had written to me with serious concerns about the NDIA's pricing review changes that were introduced on 1 July. They told me that these changes are already having a significant impact on both their ability to provide care and the wellbeing of their NDIS clients. A key concern was the lack of consultation with the sector before the changes were implemented. Physiotherapists and occupational therapists explained that the new pricing structure doesn't reflect the real cost of running a clinic or mobile practice. Rising expenses, including fuel, rent, wages and insurance, are not being matched by pricing adjustments. Allied health professionals are delivering complex, high-quality care, yet many now earn less than unqualified support workers.”
“We must address the underlying drivers of escalating higher education debt which are deepening the intergenerational divide and worsening the cost-of-living pressures faced by young Australians.”
“Students who visited Parliament House last week described how, despite needing to work to support themselves through university, they had to give up their part-time jobs to do prac placements. Added to this, some had to pay rent in two places or live in their cars, couch surf or drive hours every day to avoid the added accommodation cost. We are placing our young people in vulnerable, unsafe conditions and putting them under extreme financial distress. We are burning them out before they have even started working in their chosen career. HECS and related student loan repayments are meant to make higher education accessible and fair, but today they generate more revenue for the government than the petroleum resource rent tax. Clearly, something is deeply wrong with the way we value education, opportunity and future generations.”
“Many of these professions, particularly across the health sector, are experiencing serious workforce shortages. They are critical sectors. As the Minister for Education has acknowledged, placement poverty is a real thing. In the words of the Australian Medical Students' Association, 'Nobody should be forced to make a choice between paying the bills and contributing to our healthcare system.' Without extending prac payments to all students that have to undertake them, we risk building a medical and healthcare workforce that is made up of a privileged few who can rely on the bank of mum and dad to get by. For many students, undergoing their compulsory prac placement means physical exhaustion and financial and emotional stress. It means struggling to pay the rent and struggling to pay the bills.”
“This is due to the Australian Taxation Office practice of applying indexation to loans on 1 June but not processing loan repayments until after tax returns have been processed. Again, the Australian Universities Accord Panel has recommended that indexation be applied later in the year, after the compulsory payments that were made during the previous financial year have been deducted from a student's balance. This is a sensible recommendation that should be implemented as soon as possible. And we must expand the Commonwealth prac payments to all students required to undertake placements as part of their studies. Currently, numerous degrees with time-consuming work placements are excluded from the payment, including many allied health degrees.”
“At this time of unprecedented change, we should be supporting rather than deterring people from undertaking humanities degrees that promote critical thinking, problem solving, historical understanding, philosophical analysis and communications skills. Indeed, just recently we saw more than a hundred high-profile Australians urge the government to abolish the job-ready graduates scheme and implement an equitable university fee system that does not punish students who choose to study humanities and social sciences. We must also address the perverse timing of student loan indexation so debts are indexed after the yearly repayments are taken off. Currently, students are facing indexation increases to portions of their study debts that they have already paid.”
“I was shocked recently when I found out that my children, who have EU passports, would be able to study for an undergraduate degree in Ireland essentially for free, with only a contribution required to cover services and exams. The Australian Universities Accord : final report has clearly articulated the perverse impacts of the Job-ready Graduates Package, stating: The Job-ready Graduates package needs urgent remediation … Many students have extremely high student contributions resulting in large HELP loans that do not reflect their future earning potential. Students of history, philosophy, media and culture are now likely to pay twice as much for their degrees as students of science, IT, engineering or health. This is despite humanities degrees being essential to future jobs.”
“To secure a more equitable future for young Australians, we need to ensure that they have access to affordable tertiary education free from crippling debt. A key to reducing repayment times is ensuring that the students accrue less debt in the first place. As a priority, we must reverse the impact of the record-high student fees caused by the job-ready graduates program, as recommended under the Universities Accord. The job-ready graduates program was introduced by the Morrison government in 2020. It increased the cost of law and commerce courses by 28 per cent and saw the cost of humanities subjects more than double. A three-year arts degree is now set to cost a staggering $50,000. But it doesn't have to be this way.”
“Young people today have been hit by the triple whammy of rising housing costs, rising education costs and high living costs, resulting in growing student debt and housing stress. Significant numbers of students across the country are struggling financially and finding it almost impossible to find affordable accommodation while they study. Based on an analysis of more than 45,000 rental listings, Anglicare Australia's rental affordability snapshot revealed that no rental properties, including share houses, were affordable for a single person receiving the youth allowance. Clearly, there is a severe lack of affordable housing options for young people who are studying while on income support. The 20 per cent cut to student debt in this bill will provide welcome relief for many, but it does not address the root cause or causes of the problem.”
“Systemic changes include expanding the Commonwealth Prac Payment to cover all students required to undertake pracs as part of their studies, and they include ensuring fairer accounting of HELP debt repayments so indexation is not applied belatedly to debts that have already been paid. The reforms introduced last year by this government and secured through significant pressure from the crossbench began to address the systemic issues. Those changes included ensuring that the debts don't increase faster than wages by newly indexing debts to the lower of the Consumer Price Index or the Wage Price Index. It also included backdating the changes to undo the devastating indexation rise of 7.1 per cent that was applied in 2023. This was a positive start, but there is still more to be done.”
“But, while the measures outlined in this bill are welcome, they are not enough. A one-off reduction in student debts will not fix the systemic issues in our education and educational loan systems. Certainly, it will benefit the three million Australians who already hold student debt, but it will do nothing for the future students, who will face larger debts and longer repayment periods. There is far more work to be done to secure systemic changes, including reducing the cost of undertaking higher education itself, particularly for humanities degrees, where the cost of study has increased significantly since the introduction of the Morrison government's failed Job-ready Graduates Package.”
“The Universities Accord (Cutting Student Debt by 20 Per Cent) Bill 2025 before us seeks to address the financial inequality experienced by younger Australians by cutting outstanding student loan debts by 20 per cent, by increasing the minimum repayment thresholds for student loans so people can earn more before they are required to pay off their student debt and by shifting to a marginal repayment system. These measures will no doubt bring relief to many Australians struggling with the cost of living and mounting student debt. Indeed I have heard firsthand from people in my community that the one-off reduction in their student debt will have a tangible impact on their lives, particularly as the cost of living is currently so high. I commend the government for responding to the concerns of a section of our society that is often overlooked.”
“In a country that prides itself on giving everyone a fair go, we must confront the growing injustice that is the financial inequality and stress experienced by younger Australians. The rising cost of tertiary education and the mounting burden of student debt are not just economic issues; they are drivers of intergenerational inequity. Unless we address them now, we will leave future generations with fewer opportunities, heavier financial burdens and a diminished ability to shape their own futures.”
“My question is for the Prime Minister. I have been swamped by Mackellar people writing to me of their horror at the atrocities occurring in Gaza. I share their distress and their calls for Australia to use all diplomatic levers to end these atrocities. France will soon join 147 nations in recognising Palestine as a state in a step towards achieving peace in that area. As we witness the mass starvation and the killing of so many civilians and children in Gaza, when will Australia be prepared to recognise Palestine as a state?”
“This is the news that many millions around the world, both Tibetan and other, have been hoping to hear for many, many years, as the Dalai Lama has long been a beacon of hope and compassion in our world. Recently I was delighted to attend two vibrant celebrations to mark these auspicious occasions. The first was a day-long joyful celebration of traditional culture in my electorate of Mackellar, and the second was a dinner at New South Wales parliament house when we were extremely honoured to have the Sikyong, or President of the Central Tibetan Authority, present with us to celebrate. These events were particularly significant because such celebrations are not possible inside Tibet.”
“I'm extremely proud that Mackellar on the northern beaches of Sydney is home to the largest community of Tibetan Australians in the country. We are so fortunate to be enriched by this wonderful community. The birthdays of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, are always a cause for great celebration for Tibetans in exile around the world. This year, the 90th birthday of the Dalai Lama was an incredibly auspicious occasion. There was even greater cause for joy and celebration this year with the announcement by His Holiness that the spiritual institution of the Dalai Lama will continue after his death and that the search for the 15th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama will be done in accordance with past tradition by his inner circle only.”
“For years, nurses and medical staff have been blowing the whistle on work conditions inside the hospital. Even now, the private operator is refusing to commit to minimum safe nurse-to-patient ratios that are being rolled out in every other public hospital in the state. I helped to get a performance audit of the hospital up and running, and it is due to report imminently. A 2019 inquiry into the hospital recommended that there be no further public-private hospitals in the state. It's clear to me and it's clear to my community that this hospital must be returned to public hands, and I'm calling on the state and federal health ministers to hurry up and get the job done.”
“Two mornings ago, I attended a strike being held by nurses and midwives at our local Northern Beaches Hospital. The Northern Beaches Hospital is the only privately run public hospital remaining in New South Wales. Along with other local MPs, we wanted to show our support for this group of hardworking carers. These professionals are striking because of the conditions they are being made to work under by the private operator Healthscope. They are being stretched to the limit and burning out. These experienced nurses and midwives are our greatest asset, and yet, every day, more are forced to leave. Tragically, there have been a couple of very high-profile deaths of children at the hospital. These have been utterly devastating for our community, and the hearts of the Northern Beaches community broke for their families.”
“My question is for the prime minister. For the first time in modern history our young people will be worse off than their parents. They face converging crises of climate, environment, housing, mental ill-health and so much more. It's clear our short-term siloed thinking is harming us. Today I introduced the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill. Prime Minister, will you consider adopting my bill, which requires a long-term lens and the wellbeing of future generations to be considered in all government and public policy decision-making? If not, why not?”
“Australians want politicians to start thinking beyond their own re-election prospects. They want long-term solutions, they want vision and they want hope. We owe them that much. I'd like to take this moment to thank the many partners who have joined with me to make this bill possible, particularly Taylor Hawkins, who has made this process truly inclusive. I thank you so much. I would like to cede the rest of my speaking time to the member for Bass. Thank you.”
“It imposes a positive duty on government and public bodies to take into account the long-term impact of their decisions. It establishes an independent statutory commissioner for future generations to make sure everything this act is trying to achieve is achieved. Lastly, it will start a national conversation on the wellbeing of future generations in this country. The commissioner will lead a public consultation process to include a wide diversity of voices to make Australians active co-creators in this new vision for Australia's future. Crucially, it will establish new ways of working that embed long-term considerations and focuses on prevention. It will ensure collaboration and integration of policies of different public bodies and portfolios so that the policies of one do not undermine the policies and wellbeing goals of the other.”
“We have nearly a trillion dollars in debt. So this bill introduces a framework to change this, to make sure government and public bodies work together to ensure that they take the wellbeing of future generations of Australians into account in all their decision-making. This is not an easy reform. It will require broad cultural change, especially from our leaders. So, how will my bill change things? It's based on the fundamental principle that the needs and wellbeing of the current generation should not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and wellbeing. The bill does four things. It creates a legislative framework that ensures that intergenerational equity and wellbeing are taken into account in government and other public decision-making.”
“We must change, and that is what my bill offers today: a different way forward. This bill is heavily based on the groundbreaking work being done in Wales. Wales introduced the Well-being of Future Generations Act and Commissioner for Future Generations in 2015. The very first step was to develop a vision for the future of Wales, to hold a national conversation to establish what type of Wales they wanted to hand down to their children and future generations. As Sophie Howe, the former Commissioner for Future Generations in Wales, said, 'It should not be revolutionary for a country to have a shared vision for their future.' But many countries, including Australia, do not. Norway, on the other hand, does have one. It has a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund for the people of their nation to prosper into the future.”
“Well, it's clear—the way we make decisions, the way we plan is failing us. The systems, the structure and the culture that promote short-term thinking, short-term solutions and short-term populism over long-term vision and planning are the crux of the problem. Add to that siloed, blinkered decision-making and you have a recipe for repeated failure. Over the past three years I've witnessed firsthand the way individual portfolios and ministries of the same government may often work at odds with each other—in competition rather than in concert, where the goals and policies of one undermine the goals of another. In facing so many crises, the much used maxim 'the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome' has never been more relevant.”
“Growing homelessness and poverty; growing inequality and, of course, growing intergenerational inequality. Nor is this list exhaustive—but you get the point. These things—these multiple disasters—have not happened overnight. They have been decades in the making. But decade after decade—despite decision-makers and governments knowing about the seriousness of these problems, knowing the causes, and often even knowing the solutions—they have not acted or had been unable to act in a way that prevented these problems from occurring or relentlessly getting worse. Instead we've seen repeated short-term, bandaid solutions and policies that have been futile, or have even made the situations worse. So what is the cause of the repeated policy failures on so many different fronts? What is to blame?”
“As parents, we strive to give our children the best possible lives—safe, prosperous, happy and healthy lives. But young people today are going to be the first generation in modern history to be worse off than their parents. Centuries of progress are being undone. Our children, grandchildren and future generations of Australians will inherit a world facing converging crises that we—the current generation of leaders and policymakers—are quite simply responsible for. Climate breakdown. Environmental destruction that would have been unimaginable 50 years ago. An extinction crisis. A housing crisis, where for too many Australians the dream of owning their own home has become nothing more than a pipedream. Epidemics of depression and anxiety, of obesity and type 2 diabetes. We've let gambling infiltrate the everyday lives of our children.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Seemingly insignificant, everyday moments can change our lives. There was a moment that changed the direction of my life. One Sunday afternoon my 12-year-old son and his friends were chatting to me about climate change, and trying hard not to be alarmist I said that it was something they were likely going to have to deal with. One beautiful boy with a flash in his eyes turned to me and heartily said, 'Yes, because you adults have failed us'—no malice—just a simple statement of fact. I had to agree with him. Fast-forward three years, after promising myself to do whatever I could to not leave it to our children to clean up our mess, I had gone from being a GP to an MP. But that's a story for another day.”
“In determining whether the firms are taking reasonable steps to do those things, my amendments would (a) require them to identify vulnerable customers, (b) consider whether the consumers of the particular services in question are vulnerable customers and (c) give vulnerable customers more information about scams that the firms have already identified—not too difficult. Unfortunately, the government has indicated that it's not inclined to make the bill more consumer friendly, even in this small way. Nevertheless, I commend the amendments to the House. Question negatived.”
“My amendments define a vulnerable customer as one who is at risk or is likely to be at risk of being targeted by a scam. This might include elderly people, people with hearing difficulties or people in financial distress. Data shows that scammers are targeting elderly people, who are likely to have large savings and are looking to protect or invest this large nest egg. The bill requires regulated entities to take reasonable steps to prevent, detect, report, disrupt and respond to scams.”
“Under the reimbursement model, such as that in the UK, the burden moves to firms to work out how the liability should be apportioned between financial institutions, telcos and social media platforms. Instead, the government has chosen to put the burden of fighting to get their money back on the consumer, and, in doing so, has protected the banks, telcos and social media companies over individual customers. It is a heavy burden. In circumstances where a person may have lost their entire life savings, having to fight perhaps several institutions, including financial, telco and social media, at the one time is possibly the most uneven playing field imaginable. Given that, I consider that perhaps the government might have some appetite to better protect at least the most vulnerable of consumers.”
“The amendments I'm introducing today are an attempt to provide vulnerable customers with a higher level of protection from scams than this bill currently affords them. They are simple amendments, easy to implement and, in circumstances where this bill is weighted in the favour of banks, telcos and social media companies instead of consumers, very necessary. Let me explain what I mean by the assertion that this bill is weighted in favour of those firms. As I set out in detail in my speech in the second reading debate, it is unfortunate that the government has missed the opportunity to introduce a consumer-centric reimbursement model of scams prevention, a model where consumers are quickly reimbursed—except, of course, in cases of gross negligence on the part of the consumer—and limited up to a capped amount.”
“by leave—I move amendments (1) to (4) as revised, as circulated in my name, together: (1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 10 (after line 1), after section 58AH, insert: 58AHA Meaning of vulnerable consumer A vulnerable consumer , of a regulated service, is an SPF consumer who is at risk, or is likely to be at risk, of being targeted by a scam. (2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 13 (after line 14), after paragraph (d), insert: (da) whether the consumers of those services include vulnerable consumers; and (3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 17 (lines 14 to 18), omit all the words from and including "sector to:" to the end of paragraph (2)(b), substitute "sector to identify its vulnerable consumers; or". (4) Schedule 1, item 1, page 17 (line 21), omit "an SPF consumer described in subparagraph (b)(i) or (ii)", substitute "those vulnerable consumers".”
“Why should the victim be further punished by having to wait months and often years for reimbursement? The constituent whose story I described earlier urged me to call on the government to adopt the recommendations of the Consumer Action Law Centre, CHOICE and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network to implement a reimbursement model. I'm here to do so. She shared her story with me, and I share it in this place to lend support to ensuring a world-leading, highly effective, consumer-protecting scams prevention framework is legislated. Debate adjourned.”
“In one breath, the government has rejected the recommendations of the peak consumer bodies in this country, because the banks would be negatively impacted, more so than the telcos or the tech companies. But where, in this analysis, is the consumer? Where is the victim? Where is the policy objective, let alone the policy response, of reimbursing what could be the loss of a victim's entire life savings? It leaves the victim in the position of having to potentially fight multiple financial institutions, telcos and social media companies for reimbursement. Talk about an uneven playing field. Furthermore, the peak bodies have quite rightly pointed out that the apportionment of liability between banks, telcos and social media companies could easily be done another way: among themselves, based on precedent, after the victim has been reimbursed.”
“Specifically, they did not adequately consider an automatic reimbursement model as has already been implemented in the UK. In fact, the only reference to the UK's reimbursement model in the explanatory memorandum is to reject, in two sentences, the strong joint recommendation of the Consumer Action Law Centre, CHOICE and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Their call was to mirror the UK's reimbursement framework here in Australia. In rejecting that proposal, the government states that it would, and I paraphrase, place a presumption of liability for scams losses onto one sector—that is, the banks—with minimal incentives for other sectors, such as telecommunications and digital platforms, to accept liability for not meeting their obligations. Let's break that down for a moment.”
“The impact analysis in the explanatory memorandum of the bill states: The core objectives of the government's policy response would be to both reduce scam harms and align the benefits and costs of scam prevention. It goes on to say that Treasury has considered two options as part of that policy response. Option 1 is 'maintain the status quo'. In other words, do nothing. How is this considered a policy option robust enough to include in an explanatory memorandum for a bill of this kind? It is absolutely confounding. Option 2 is 'establish the Scams Prevention Framework'. This is just weird. In other words, the government considered no other alternatives to the option they settled on. They did not analyse scam prevention systems established in other, similar countries.”
“As I mentioned earlier, Australians lose 18 per cent more to scammers than people in the UK do, and that is not taking into account the fact that their population is 2.5 times larger than ours. In 2022, in Australia, only 13 per cent of attempted scam payments were stopped by the banks before they occurred. Once completed, only two to five per cent of scams victims were reimbursed for their losses—a miniscule amount. In the UK, by contrast, the top four banks pay out 49 to 73 per cent of losses, and those statistics come from before the UK introduced an automatic reimbursement scheme. This is from when it was still voluntary. Where is the evidence that Australia will become a honey pot? We have been shown none.”
“ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said that their data indicates that scammers are targeting older Australians with retirement savings who might be looking for investment opportunities. So I am disappointed by the path the government has chosen to take to address this devastating issue, as the consumer—the victim—has been sidelined and neglected in this piece of legislation. The main argument that has been offered by the government to reject the reimbursement model is the honey pot, or moral hazard, argument. The argument goes that, if financial or other designated institutions automatically reimburse victims, then victims would take less care with their investments, knowing the reimbursement was guaranteed. The scams market would open right up, and scammers would flock here. Australia is already the honey pot.”
“The banking institutions are privy to a vast amount of information that we the public do not have access to. The constituent who wrote to me could not have summed up the position any better: Banks in Australia are institutions of immense wealth and status. They exercise a very powerful role in our society … It follows … that community expectation is for the highest standards of professionalism. To me, this would extend to exceeding minimum standards which are seemingly no longer fit for purpose, and crucially being proactive in responding to changing circumstances, in particular to the increased occurrence and destructive effects of scams, as well as being responsive to the needs and vulnerabilities of elderly customers, by ensuring the most effective, best-designed systems of protection are in place.”
“The scammers took advantage of her age and her vulnerability; her trust in authority, typical of that generation; and her lack of computer skills. In the end, this scam involved six financial institutions and resulted in my constituent's mother losing $800,000. Six financial institutions were involved. Due to my constituent's diligence in pursuing this matter over 18 months, around $150,000 of that money that was scammed away was recovered. But recovering even this portion of the money has been exhausting work for her. In her experience, the position of the majority of the financial institutions was to blame the victim, implying negligence or carelessness. It was not that she was preyed upon by fraudsters or that the bank ought to have done so much more to protect her, a vulnerable customer.”
“These sessions were indeed very popular, and the stories of the scams that people had fallen prey to were alarming, to say the least. One constituent wrote to me about her 93-year-old mother being scammed. It was only after a serious car accident, fearing that she might die, that her mother admitted to having been scammed. The scam involved direct phone calls to her mother from people purporting to be from the Federal Police and from her bank, and the scam played out over several months. The scammers managed to convince her that the only way she could keep her savings secure was to move her money around to other accounts by buying gift cards, sending cheques to various places and making large transfers to unknown people. They used every trick in the book.”
“Since I was elected, I've been contacted by many constituents who have been the victim of absolutely terrible scams or have had loved ones who have been. Everybody knows someone who has been a victim. And it's not just the victim of the scam that is impacted; entire families are affected, particularly when life-changing amounts of money are lost. To respond to that concern, I've partnered with Scamwatch to host community information sessions on scam prevention. Scamwatch is the Australian government initiative designed to help consumers stay one step ahead of the scammers. Recently I held a webinar with Stephanie Tonkin, the CEO of the Consumer Action Law Centre, to help equip my constituents with the information they need to best protect themselves.”
“Fraud is when a third party steals your identity or your credit card and steals from you without your knowledge. That loss is not included in the figures I've just mentioned, and, more importantly, as many of us know, is typically reimbursed by financial institutions. A scam is when we ourselves authorise a transaction—give our money away—but under false pretences, to scammers who have promised a reward, an investment return or something similar. It's more complicated when you yourself have handed over your own money, and it's more embarrassing and more traumatising for the victim. Like the scourge of domestic violence in this country, no-one is too well off, too educated or too sophisticated to be safe from falling victim to a scam. My community is, appropriately, very concerned about it.”
“People are invariably ashamed to discover they have been scammed, duped and fleeced, so many scam victims never report what has happened to them. Let's put those Australian losses in perspective. The $2.74 billion a year that we lose to scams is 18 per cent more than what the people of the UK lose to scams, and that number is not per capita; the UK has 2½ times Australia's population. To the extent that there is a debate about scams regulation creating a honey pot—more on that a bit later—the fact is that we are already a honey pot for scams. It's hard to imagine how proper regulation could make it worse, and, despite what the big banks would have you believe, they are not doing nearly enough to prevent scams taking hold. It's also important to point out that, when we talk about scams, we're not talking about fraud.”
“I rise today in support of the government's efforts to address the scourge of scams in this country, but I do so with significant concerns about the way they've approached the problem in this, the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024. The prevalence and pernicious impact of scams in this country mean that real, tangible effort to address them is urgent. Many other countries are forging ahead to protect their citizens. Australia is lagging behind and needs to do the same. The UK has set a strong precedent. Let's have a look at the scams landscape in Australia so that we get a sense of the scale of the problem. Last year we lost $2.74 billion in this country to scams. That's more than $5,200 per minute, all day, every day, and that's only the scams we know about.”
“This finding was a resounding call to action and is the critical aspect that I seek to address with the policy that I announced earlier this week. I propose that from July 2025 small businesses with an annual turnover of under $10 million benefit from a tax-free threshold of $20,000. Not only will this plan support the nearly 33,000 small businesses on the Northern Beaches which generate over 116,000 jobs, but nationwide it stands to benefit 2.58 million businesses. This measure for the Northern Beaches arrives at a critical juncture. Our local businesses in Mackellar are currently bracing for a nearly 40 per cent rate hike by the Northern Beaches Council. Such a move would exert undue pressure on households and local enterprises across the region. (Time expired)”