Federal government crackdown on scammers

Transcript

00:00 For well over a decade these criminals had a free run and they were ripping Australians off when we came into government

00:06 the scammers

00:09 Were stealing three billion dollars a year from Australians and small businesses

00:15 That's three billion dollars a year every one of those dollars at a tragedy behind us

00:21 We made a promise to turn the tide and that's exactly what we're doing

00:25 Phase one of our program was the introduction of a national anti-scam center. We've stood that up

00:30 It's been up and running for six months now

00:32 We've also empowered the Australian Securities and Investment Commission

00:36 To go after the fake investment websites and given them money to do that

00:41 Well over four thousand of those websites have been pulled down which means they're not luring Australians

00:46 Into those portals where they upload their money and they lose it to the criminals

00:51 But the good news is what we're doing is working

00:55 Under the previous government's watch they lost Australians lost over five billion dollars

01:00 to the scammers over half of that was in investment scams the numbers were doubling every year and

01:05 It looks like through the stuff we put into place through phase one

01:10 That we've turned the tide

01:13 That losses are coming down in particular in the area of investment scams, and that's really good news

01:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]