Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I want to talk about the current scourge of unwanted text messages and emails that are irritating so many Australians. Of course, many legitimate businesses use texts and emails to communicate with their customers, and my comments are not directed towards them. Spam, as well as malicious text and emails, have been a worldwide problem for some time, including here in Australia and they seem to have escalated sharply during COVID-19—particularly here in my electorate.

The ACCC says that scams delivered via phone or text this year outnumber those sent through any other delivery method, including social media and email. Reports suggest that SMS scams cost Australians approximately $6 million over the past 12 months. Delivery and postal scams are particularly common, but there are other types of fraud, such as premium rate tax fraud, tax demands, fake contact tracing messages and SMS phishing. There have also been recent reports of a flu bot scam, duping hundreds.

Australians are desperate to stop this SMS tsunami, with 13,000 complaints to the ACCC's Scamwatch in August and September. That rose to 16,000 in the last month. (Time expired)