Allegra Spender
Wentworth · Independent · Australia
“Estimates are between 0.5 per cent and two per cent of all abortions over 20 weeks. They are generally because of late diagnosed anomalies, genetic syndromes or severe fetal growth problems.”
“The bill is useful, it is technical, it's incremental, it has useful schedules, it has 'tell us once', it has streamlining and it has technical fixes. These are all good things, and I do not underestimate the effort that goes into getting useful changes like this.”
“Across Australia, we're seeing rising threats to women's access to abortion care. We see it in bills in state parliaments. We see it in the way some politicians talk about this issue, using misinformation and scare tactics to drive divisions, tools straight out of the Trump playbook.”
“They're saying they're waiting up to 18 months for the ATO to make a decision on how an investment would be treated, so the foreign capital just goes away. We need to change the culture here, and this is why—while I support this government's actions in this space—I urge the government to go further. This isn't about bad people.”
“I've seen firsthand how drone technology is at the forefront of some of these problems because government is slow to make decisions. There's no accountability from many government departments in terms of the speed of their decision-making.”
“I support the government's work on the fund, but I think it's currently around one tenth the size of the original 1990s National Competition Fund. If we expect that to move the dial, as it did back in the 1990s, we are going to have to put more firepower behind it.”
The complete record
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“Next month, Wentworth will commemorate the first anniversary of the horrific attack at Bondi Junction Westfield, which claimed the lives of Ashlee Good, Dawn Singleton, Faraz Tahir, Jade Young, Pikria Darchia and Yixuan Cheng. This was a tragedy that traumatised our community and changed the lives of the families and friends who lost loved ones. Six beautiful lives were cut short. These people mattered, and honouring their memories is up to all of us. The Bondi Junction tragedy also shone a light on Australia's chronic and severe mental health crisis. Mental health has the second-largest burden of disease after cancer in Australia, yet it attracts as little as seven per cent of total government health expenditure. Nearly a quarter of a million people with severe mental health conditions have unmet needs for psychosocial supports.”
“While I think we should celebrate each of the incremental steps in improving the childcare system as progress, I think we need to be honest with ourselves; history tells us the joy will be short-lived. I support the government's direction on child care and believe the Productivity Commission's recommendations provide a modest reprieve to working families. We need to accept these modest changes but look at a redesign of the system. We need to prioritise this issue in the next term of parliament and work out how we can get better outcomes at an affordable price both for families and the taxpayer. Having such high childcare and early learning costs compared to other countries around the world is hurting families and hurting the economy as well.”
“Families are seeing their hourly fees skyrocket well above the rate cap that's meant to be adjusted, and families are stuck and unaware of their eligibility because the application process for child care is archaic, complicated and inflexible. I remember trying to apply for the CCS myself and finding it notoriously complex; I'm well-educated and happy to deal with government systems, but this is a difficulty. For people in my area, an area that is relatively well served with child care compared to many parts of the country, the idea of shopping around for child care is a joke because families are completely beholden to the availability of places and often take whatever hours they can get—and that doesn't start to deal with shift workers and other complexities.”
“I think we need to look at the education system and also the compliance system, and say, 'How do we make sure that these are well-targeted to deliver high-quality but more affordable child care into our country?' Finally, we need to look at the complexity of the system for parents. I've had numerous contacts from people in the community talking about the challenges in accessing the system, where young families are being caught out because they're unaware of the convention and the necessity of applying for childcare positions when the child hasn't yet been born. After 12 weeks of pregnancy I was calling all the childcare centres in my area, and I still struggled to get my children into a childcare centre.”
“Similarly, I talk to them about training in relation to early childhood education. I was speaking to a woman who had been involved in early childhood education as a nanny for eight to 10 years. She had entered her training with a great desire to learn new skills and learn more about child development, but she spent her time learning about the compliance. That is ticking the boxes but not building her skills, and it's making it harder for her to continue with her childcare education because she's earning a lower wage but not feeling like she's building her skills.”
“When I talk to my local childcare centres, they tell me time and time again that some of the quality and compliance that is put in place—which is there for good aims, good reasons, in relation to maintaining childcare quality—is turning into a tick box that is not actually adding a lot of value. It has just become an administrative burden. In some cases they are pulling workers away from their kids because of all this documentation and the pressure to provide parents with updates constantly through the day, with photos and things like that. There are some rods that we've created for our own backs, with parents getting all this information. The system as it stands is making it more expensive and harder for childcare centres to offer high-quality child care at a price affordable to families and affordable to the government.”
“Research by the New South Wales Productivity and Equality Commission showed that a one per cent increase in fees paid by a family led to a 0.16 per cent fall in the number of hours worked by the primary carer, which, in 80 per cent of cases, is the mother. As I said, it's no wonder that Australia's birth rate is so low. We do need to look at broader reforms. As well as looking at how we fund this, how we make sure that we address childcare deserts and how we increase access, as we are looking to do through this removal of the activity test, we also need to look at supply-side factors that are driving up the cost of child care for Australian families.”
“It's wrong for families in our country to have to choose not to have children because they can't afford the child care. It's also bad economics. We know that we've got a birth rate that is at a record low at 1.5. It's historically low, but it's not a surprise given how much child care costs at the moment. Even with the subsidy, the average family in my electorate of Wentworth is still spending around $40,000 on out-of-pocket childcare fees to put two children into child care just four days a week. That goes up to $60,000 if they're not getting the Child Care Subsidy. We're talking about $120,000 of income that is required to pay for child care.”
“Around my electorate, which is an economically advantaged electorate, higher childcare costs are stopping people from having more children. I was doorknocking the other day and I met a young woman. She's got two kids. Her family are really good earners; they've just bought a house, and she and her husband have great jobs. Despite both of them literally earning well into the six figures, she said, 'We can't afford to have another child right now because of the cost of child care.' If you are not receiving the Child Care Subsidy, you're spending around $60,000 of post-tax income on childcare fees alone, and that's just for three days a week. For families in my area, some of whom are at the edges of the Child Care Subsidy, this is stopping them from having more kids.”
“Those are the ones we need to be investing in the most to make sure they start school with the skills that will allow them to succeed and go through the school system with those skills, and that means having great access to high-quality early childhood education. That is why the removal of the activity test is so important, and that is why I'm supporting the bill. I do want to acknowledge that, while we are working on the childcare system in this parliament, there are some fundamental issues with the entire system. I think it is incumbent on the parliament in the next term, whatever form it takes, to really fundamentally address them. Let's look at the numbers. Gross childcare fees in Australia are the third highest in the OECD; after the inclusion of the CCS, they are still the seventh highest. Those are the statistics.”
“In fact, research by the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee attested the opposite: that the test complicated the system, created uncertainty around funding and impacted employment decisions, around the margins, leading to a decrease in workforce participation. I think that's the context we need to see this question in. The activity test was there to increase workforce participation. It appears that it has done the opposite. The activity test is restricting access to high-quality early learning for kids from our most disadvantaged backgrounds. We know the numbers. We know that the kids who are most likely to be behind when they start school are those kids from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.”
“In particular, the Productivity Commission, in its most recent report, agreed that the activity test has disproportionately impacted low-income families and kept children from disadvantaged backgrounds from fully receiving the benefits of the childcare system. Impact Economics and Policy estimates that around 126,000 children from low-income households, from the poorest households, are missing out on child care. In particular, they could find no evidence that the activity test had the effect of increasing workforce participation, which was the major argument for the activity test.”
“The first years of a child's life are about setting them up for success, and, if they have access to high-quality child care, it improves language, motor skills and social skills during this critical time of their lives. This bill makes an important contribution to our childcare system by modifying the flawed activity test that determines the number of hours of subsidised child care for families based on recognised work, training or study. Under this legislation, families will have access to a guaranteed three days of care regardless of their activity. Now let's look at the context of this. This activity test was introduced in 2018, but, ever since then, the activity test has been criticised.”
“The confidence with which I could drop off my children, knowing they would have a day of fulfilment, would be safe and would be learning, and with which I could then go and do my job—which I loved—was not only integral to my mental health and to my ability to pay the bills but also to the lives of my kids. Research from the University of Chicago and Stanford estimated that between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of our rise in living standards since the 1960s has been a direct result of increased female workforce participation. So much of that has been about how our children can be looked after. But let's not forget the demonstrable impact that great, high-quality early childhood education has on kids, because you see that from children participating in child care.”
“Early education is absolutely critical to Australian families and to Australian children. Having accessible and affordable early childhood education makes a massive difference, a huge difference, to community members and their families and certainly to people in Wentworth. Affordable and high-quality child care allows parents, particularly women, to return to the workforce, contribute to the economy and boost productivity. As someone who at some stage of my life was dropping off three children at the same time to my local early education child care up in Paddington, I couldn't have done it without them.”
“We can no longer afford to go back and forth, parliament by parliament and see good work reversed. It will take courage to stand up to vested interests. It is now up to all members of this House to work together to protect the Australian natural environment we all treasure. I want to particularly thank the member for North Sydney for bringing this really important issue to the House today. It is absolutely critical. I know that the environment and climate are issues that North Sydney is passionate about, and the member for North Sydney has represented her community extremely well in consistently advocating for this. I'm sure she will continue to do this after she leaves this House.”
“We need a tough cop on the beat to ensure decisions are based on the evidence, not decided by vested interests. Fifthly, and finally, we need to increase our investment in nature. Over the past decade, federal spending on biodiversity has been just 30 per cent of the OECD average—a fraction of what the scientists say is needed. While funding has increased in this parliament, the government still spends 16 times more on subsidising fossil fuels than protecting nature. That must change. None of these actions alone are a silver bullet, but together they would put us on a path to protecting our environment for future generations. Implementing them won't be easy. It will require conviction to change the status quo. It will require collaboration between parliamentarians, business and civil society.”
“Secondly, we need to fix our broken environmental laws. The EPBC Act doesn't protect the environment and it doesn't work for business. Professor Graeme Samuel provided the blueprint for reform back in 2020. We have not made the progress we should have in this parliament, and this must be a priority for the next parliament. Thirdly, we need to account for climate pollution in environmental assessments. Climate change is the biggest threat to nature, yet our environmental laws don't even consider it. That must change so we can accelerate clean energy projects and take account of harm caused by large amounts of climate pollution. Fourthly, we need an independent environmental protection authority. Our environmental laws are not being enforced, and too many decisions are being left in the hands of politicians.”
“People in Wentworth know we need to do more—people like Marnie, who wrote to me about the need for an independent environmental regulator, people like Nicholas, who are calling for action to protect 30 per cent of our land by 2030, and people like Jennifer, who are demanding stronger environmental laws. I share their concerns and their ambitions. From saving the maugean skate to conserving the northern jarrah forests, the need for urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity decline has never been clearer. To protect our environment for future generations, we need to do five things. Firstly, we need to end native logging. This is an industry that destroys koala habitat, worsens the climate crisis and costs New South Wales's taxpayers millions each year because the state-run logging corporation is not even economically viable.”
“We stopped fossil fuel exploration in PEP-11 to protect Sydney's coastline from oil and gas extraction. And I want to pay tribute to the communities who have really driven this, many of whom are in my electorate of Wentworth. You have stood up, and government has listened. We have strengthened our environmental laws, with a water trigger to properly assess the impact of major projects on water resources. And, again, this is something I am very proud that I advocated for and am proud to have seen done. Finally, we are now on track for a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. We need to go further, but this is absolutely critical. But this is nowhere near enough.”
“I completely agree that this parliament must set aside political differences and work together to protect our natural environment, because nature in Australia is in crisis. Every hour, we bulldoze an area of unique and threatened species habitat the size of eight Melbourne Cricket Grounds. Over the last 200 years, we have suffered the largest biodiversity decline of any continent, and while we've made progress towards our 2030 targets climate change continues to pose an existential threat to our environment, with reports yesterday that we reached the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees of global warming last year. Now, this is dire, but I want to acknowledge the progress that this parliament has made. We will now have more investment in nature protection through measures like the nature repair market.”
“Third, we need to get rid of the failed job-ready graduates program that has unfairly penalised arts students. Arts degrees bring essential skills to the workplace, to our society and to our humanity. Our young people are more productive, happier and more committed to members of society if they are allowed to follow their skills, their interests and their passions at university. Trying to shoehorn them into other paths with clumsy, expensive and inequitable fees is counterproductive, and it didn't even work. We need to get rid of the unfair and ineffective job-ready graduates scheme put in place by the last Liberal government and give students starting arts degrees a fair go.”
“A simple fix would be to change the date of indexation from 1 June to after the deadline of individual tax returns. This would mean we stop charging interest on debts that the students have already paid. Second, we need a fair treatment of student debt by financial institutions. Currently, APRA guidance for HECS debts is one sentence long and requires student debt to be treated the same as other types of loans, including buy now, pay later. This is despite the fact that student debt repayments are income dependent, unlike other forms of credit. The Australian Banking Association say they would be open to considering HECS debt differently, but, until guidance from the government says otherwise, their hands are tied. Government needs to step in.”
“I'm proud that pressure from the crossbench led to changes in HECS debt indexation last year, which will wipe $3 billion of student debt off for three million Australians. That is good. That is what the crossbench has been standing up for. But we need to do more to support young Australians studying for their future, who cannot afford crippling US-style student debts. We need to do three things. First, we need to create a smarter system of indexation. Right now, graduates are charged interest on debts they've already paid. That's because our current system doesn't account for repayments that people make to their student loans throughout the year. The Universities Accord recommended changing this. But so far we've seen no action.”
“I, therefore, support calls from schools in my area and across the country for CTC scores to be calculated and released earlier in the year to give sufficient time for schools to adapt. At a minimum, I urge the government to provide schools with at least six months between the finalisation of CTC scores and the new school year. This would help provide much-needed funding stability for schools and parents and allow them to better plan for the year ahead. I want to talk about keeping a lid on student debt. There are so many people young people in Wentworth who feel like they've done the right thing—worked hard at school, gone to uni and got a good job—but now feel weighed down by student debt and don't think they'll ever be able to buy a house or get ahead like their parents did.”
“The situation is also challenging for parents, who can face higher school fees with just a few weeks of notice before the school year ends and the new term begins. When many are already struggling with the cost of living and keeping their kids in school, it's an addition challenge they could do without. It's right to have a fair funding model for independent schools which reflects the capacity of local communities to contribute to the cost of their kids' education. But we do need to provide certainty and stability around this funding and give schools and parents time to adjust if there are changes. Announcing CTC scores in mid-November when funding changes happen in January is not providing that certainty and stability.”
“However, last year, CTC scores for the 2025 academic year were not released until 12 November 2024. This left independent schools in my electorate with just a couple of months before the new funding arrangements came into effect. That's not enough time to deal with significant changes in funding. Data from Independent Schools Australia shows that around one-fifth of independent schools nationwide saw a funding decrease as a result of changes to the CTC score, with one school experiencing a funding cut of more than $1 million. For many schools, these funding changes can only be dealt with by cutting programs, changing staff levels or increasing fees. This means we need to have more than a couple of months to plan for this.”
“It means properly funding public schools, and it means continuing to support independent schools. In Wentworth, independent schools, including Catholic schools, receive on average around 5½ thousand dollars per student in state and federal funding. At a New South Wales level, this compares to about $22,000 per student, per public school. For most people I speak to, this seems like a reasonable balance, and so I urge all parliamentarians to commit to ensuring that all schools, including independent and Catholic schools, receive their full SRS funding. The second way we can support independent schools is by providing greater certainty around when funding is provided. Currently, the Department of Education determines a capacity to contribute score for each school community every year, which, in turn, determines their level of funding.”
“As well as promoting public education, we also need to continue to support our terrific independent schools. First, that means maintaining funding for independent schools in line with their schooling resource standard entitlement. There are some in this place who seek to pit public education against independent schools, pushing a false narrative that they're competing for a fixed bucket of money and claiming that support of one comes at the expense of another. I don't accept this, and this is not how the system works. We are a country where every parent should have the right to choose the school they believe is best for their child, and, over many years, we have had a multipartisan consensus on funding schools in line with the Gonski review's SRS. We want all schools to get to that 100 per cent of their entitlement.”
“That's why I've been working with a local architect and expert in urban school design to develop a vision for a new high school in the east. The options are incredibly exciting, but time is running out, with much of the land available in the east slated for development, and new opportunities are very hard to come by. Parents in Wentworth are demanding action on public education. More than 3,000 local people have called for a new public high school in Sydney's east by signing my petition. They want the New South Wales government to listen to our community and to take action to plan for a new high school before it's too late. Their voices need to be heard by both the state and federal governments, and so I ask leave of the Federation Chamber to table a copy of this petition. Leave granted.”
“Just last week the state government revised the boundaries for Inner Sydney High School, meaning parents in Double Bay, Centennial Park and Woollahra will no longer be able to send their kids to that school. Inner Sydney High School was only opened in 2020, after years of campaigning by members of that community. Parents are rightly outraged. As one said, this is a decision that 'divides the community'. When many families are already struggling with the cost of school fees, this could drive even more to leave our area. I'm proud of the advocacy by our community which secured over $40 million to upgrade Randwick High School and make it co-ed, but we still desperately need more options for public education in Sydney's east.”
“I'll focus my remarks this evening on education and the need to do more to support not only public education but also independent schools, as well as university students in my community of Wentworth. Wentworth is fortunate to have some wonderful schools, but options for public high school education are thin on the ground. Whilst half the kids in our area attend a public primary school, less than one in five continue into high schools in the state system. This isn't because there's a lack of demand. In 2023 a survey by parent group CLOSEast found that three-quarters of parents wanted to send their kids to a co-ed public high school. But the options just aren't there, and they've been getting reduced further by recent decisions by the New South Wales government.”
“Stephen Burgess and Stephen Alchin have both made an incredible contribution to this bill, and I'm very grateful for their support in this. I would like now to give my remaining time to the member for Curtin to say a few words.”
“We need to systematically look at spending across the board to work out where we can redirect. Where do we have to reduce it to get better value for money elsewhere? The crossbench has consistently argued for integrity in government spending to end the rorts, and this is part of that push. Too often politicians show that they care about an issue by committing hundreds of millions of dollars in some big announcement. We need an approach in this parliament that shows that we care, by committing to achieve outcomes at the lowest possible cost, not with the highest possible fanfare, which is our current approach. This needs to be just the start on how we get better value for taxpayers' money across this parliament. Finally, I would like to thank a couple of people in particular for this work.”
“Inflation is still higher than it should be and is hurting Australian families. We in this House need to be pulling back on spending wherever we can to relieve inflationary pressures and to deliver value for money to this country and ensure that we don't just build up more debt. That should be the job of this parliament. I am writing to the government and opposition leaders to commit to this bill and these changes, and I challenge them to explain to the Australian people why they aren't in the interests of this country. Certainly, from the government side, it shouldn't be so hard because some of these measures are actually based on what the Prime Minister was seeking himself when he was the shadow minister for infrastructure. But this needs to be the start of a broader approach.”
“Most people would ask me, 'Surely this already happens?' But the truth is it doesn't. The Halton review—a 2023 review that this government recommended—found significant issues with how projects were determined, and determined that there were serious doubts on the federal government's capability to be an informed investor in national transport infrastructure. The review of the infrastructure investment pipeline identified 80 projects that shouldn't go ahead—but the government hasn't told us what those 80 are, so we don't know what's been cancelled and if those are the projects that should be cancelled based on that analysis. That's not transparent, that's not accountable, and it's not good value for taxpayer money. Our country's finances are in a structural deficit.”
“Thirdly, it requires the minister to come back to parliament when there are material changes to the costs of a project—and, sadly, the numbers only ever go up, never down—and outline any mitigation strategies, so the ministers are accountable for these blowouts. And finally, the bill requires the government to complete and publish an independent post-completion review of all projects above a threshold. This will ensure we actually learn from past cost blowouts, and don't consistently under-budget projects. These measures sound simple—and that is because they are. I spent most of my life before politics in business, and the sort of discipline I'm outlining is par for the course. It's pretty much the basics, in the real world and the business world out there. But not in the world in here.”
“And that is where this bill comes in. And it should just be the start. This is a very simple bill. This bill will ensure better value for taxpayers on large and expensive infrastructure projects and ensure that these projects are selected for the national interest, not political gain. It does this through four simple ways. Firstly, it requires government to put in place a long-term land transport infrastructure strategy, over a 10-year period. We may have elections every three years but the infrastructure decisions that are critical to this country must not blow with every political wind. Secondly, it requires the government to make public at the time of announcement all business cases above a threshold, to allow the public to scrutinise every investment decision.”
“But instead, they both kept spending, to the point that our infrastructure pipeline has $32 billion worth of cost pressures off a $120 billion base—that is costs that weren't anticipated in the initial project memorandums but have blown out. You might forgive them if these were truly the most important projects for the country—the ones that were truly nation-building, the ones that would transform the lives of ordinary Australians. But we don't have that guarantee—as the sports rorts and the continually-blowing-out Suburban Rail Loop show, too often these projects just don't stack up. The decisions are political, not for the country. The business cases are too often hidden. The budgets are too often blown. This is not value for money. This is not accountable spending. This is not integrity. This needs to stop.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. While an election hasn't yet been called, already the Prime Minister and the opposition leader are out on the campaign trail promising billions of dollars on infrastructure and other projects around the country. They want you to be grateful for their generosity—but they keep on forgetting that this is our money they're spending, and we just aren't getting value for money. That is what worries my electorate of Wentworth. We are still battling to overcome inflationary pressures in our economy. Building costs have seen some of the worst areas of inflation—with costs up 30 per cent since the pandemic. Infrastructure Australia warned back in 2019 that public sector infrastructure needed to slow down to avoid inflationary pressures both in public and private construction.”
“This is something that would make a difference to small businesses right now, and the government should be trying to support small businesses, rather than punish them.”
“Last year, I and other crossbenchers wrote to the government and said that IR complexity and regulatory complexity more broadly are some of the biggest barriers to the growth of small businesses. It's one of the biggest reasons that small businesses are not hiring people and in some cases are shutting down. We wrote to the government and argued that they should increase the threshold of the definition of 'small business' in the Fair Work Act from its arbitrary 15 employees to 25 employees at least. If you're a small business and you have, in particular, mainly part-time or casual workers, 15 employees are not very many. You're not going to have all the HR support to be able to make sure that you can still manage all the complexities of the IR legislation. This is what the government should do.”
“This chapter of the bill has been panned by accountant groups and small businesses alike. Now, I understand that, on the face of this, this measure seems sensible. It creates an incentive to tax on time, which I support. But the timing of this legislation is extremely poor, given the rapid growth of small business insolvencies in recent years, with cash flow described as the No. 1 cause of these insolvencies according to ASIC. There just isn't the evidence that these systems are being exploited by small businesses as a cheap form of credit. The government knows this is an unpopular move, and that is why it has packaged this legislation in with a handful of other measures that are difficult for this parliament not to pass. The government should be focusing on measures that actually make it easier for small businesses to flourish right now.”
“It also indexes the luxury car threshold in line with regular vehicles, so this amendment to the current luxury car tax is welcome. The third part extends the ATO notification period for retaining refunds for further investigation and, again, is sensible. The fourth extends the instant asset write-off for small businesses until June 2025—an election commitment and, again, a no-brainer. But it is the second part of this bill, the chapter that removes deductions for interest charges on GIC and SIC, that is highly problematic. I see this as an unnecessary change that will remove the ability of businesses to deduct their general interest charge and their shortfall interest charge. By Treasury's own admission, this will overwhelmingly impact small businesses that are already doing it tough.”
“I, and other crossbenchers, am getting pretty sick of this kind of behaviour from this government. We're repeatedly presented with these omnibus Treasury bills which package controversial reforms in with policies that are undoubtedly positive. This, we can only infer, is to prevent proper discussion of the issues. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Incentives and Integrity) Bill 2024 has four provisions, three of which are good and one of which is terrible. The first part of the bill introduces a luxury car tax, which I and many others have been advocating for a long time and is a complete no-brainer. It updates the definition of a fuel-efficient car to 3.5 litres per 100 kilometres from seven litres per 100 kilometres.”
“This is a question for the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Small businesses in Wentworth are really struggling, and one of the main reasons is complex regulation that has gotten worse this term. Members of the crossbench wrote to the government about raising the threshold of the definition of 'small business' from 15 to 25 workers. Now, this isn't expected to cost $125 million, $1.6 billion or even $10 billion a year. Will the government support the implementation of this reasonable and measurable, practical policy that would support small business?”
“Shine a light on who's doing a good job and who's doing a bad job, and then you might get change. It's then that we might see real change in the Australian market, which is what we haven't seen. Since 2017, Europe has had some of the innovations that are just coming into place in Australia. Why haven't we had them? Because the incentives haven't been there. Let's stop playing catch-up.”
“We know that these scams are run by organised international criminal cartels. It is incredibly hard for individuals to protect themselves from these scams, even savvy consumers who are doing a really good job of protecting themselves. They can't do it alone. If the Deputy Chair of ASIC can be scammed, anyone in this country can be scammed, whatever personal protections they are putting in place. So the question then goes to how they can protect themselves. This legislation is helpful, but the best way for people to protect themselves is for us to make sure that banks, telcos and social media companies are innovating—that they're putting their best minds to work on how to protect their consumers—and the best way to drive that investment in innovation isn't just regulation; it's actually transparency.”
“I don't believe, honestly, that the federal government or the regulators are innovating at the pace required to understand where the technology can go. I think the private sector needs strong incentives to make the innovation that is required in this space. You can do that through reimbursement models or you can do it through publishing, at a bank level, data saying, 'It's this many scams; this is the percentage of losses; this is the reimbursement,' so consumers can make the right choices. And consumers can show, via their wallet, whether they want to support a bank that is protecting them from scams or whether they don't. This is about putting the power to protect themselves from scams back in the hands of Australian consumers. We know that scams are so sophisticated these days.”
“Publish the number of scams that different banks are dealing with.' We should publish the numbers—scams detected, reported and responded to, as well as the amounts lost and the amounts reimbursed—for all regulated entities quarterly, not when the regulator publishes aggregated information once a year, buried in the back of a financial model. The fundamental point I'm trying to make here is that without this separation of details, without this information at different levels, the banks will not have the strongest incentive to invest in scam prevention. The only way to protect Australian consumers is to strongly incentivise banks to do it. A code can do this, but codes are always playing catch-up with the technology in place.”