My question is to the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services. How is the Albanese Labor government's fight against scammers helping Australians keep their money safe and ensuring people keep more of what they earn?

Mr JONES (Whitlam—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (15:17): I thank the amazing member for Werriwa for that question. I also thank her for organising and inviting me to a great gathering at the Liverpool Catholic Club last week to discuss this very issue. In fact, it came the day after the member for Newcastle invited me to attend a gathering at the Souths Merewether to inform her constituents about these important consumer issues.

It is worth advising the House that it's now 297 days since the coalition has had a consumer affairs spokesperson. It is important— interjecting—

Mr JONES: The Albanese government is committed to ensuring that Australians earn more and that they keep more of what they earn. If they're saving that money, investing or shopping online, we're committed to ensuring that we keep people's money safe.

Now, we've come from a long way back, because when we came into government there was an appalling track record left to us by the former government. Annual losses to scams were $3 billion a year.

— interjecting—

Mr JONES: I'm making the point that, if we continued the policies adopted by others, those losses per annum would go from $3 billion to $6 billion to $12 billion over the term of this parliament. The good news is that, because of the policies that have been implemented by the Albanese government, they haven't. In fact, for the first time in years, we're seeing scam losses actually decline. They've declined because we have put in place a range of measures, including standing up Australia's—in fact the world's—first national antiscam centre, which is taking the fight to scammers. You can't keep people safe unless you're keeping their money safe, and we're dedicated to ensuring we're keeping people's money safe. We've stood up the National Anti-Scam Centre. We've got the Australian Securities and Investments Commission pulling down fake websites. There have been over 4,000 already. My friend the Minister for Communications is working with the telecommunications companies to ensure that they're blocking more and more—in fact millions—of those menacing SMS messages. There's more work to come.

Of course, it's not game over. We've got to continue taking the fight up to the scammers. It's why this year we'll be implementing tough new codes of practice. Those codes of practice will put obligations on banks, social media companies and telecommunications companies to ensure we are doing more and more to keep people's money safe. We will not adopt the same policies of those opposite, which saw scam losses double, and then double, and then double again. We're committed to keeping people's money safe, because we want them to earn more, to keep more of what they earn and to keep their money safe.

Link to Hansard: Full Question