For two years Scott Morrison has stood by and watched as scams have exploded across Australians’ social media platforms and mobile phones.

He’s ignored Labor’s calls to establish a National Anti-Scam Centre to coordinate a response to these insidious crimes that now cost our economy $33 billion every year and growing.

And he’s ignored our calls to hold the social media platforms to account for the false and deceptive material they disseminate to unsuspecting Australian families.

Labor welcomes news that the ACCC is now investigating Facebook with a view to possible court action over the scams perpetrated on the platform.

We welcome Rod Sims’ observation that Facebook knowingly allows false and misleading material on its platform and could do more to take such material down.

But this is not new.

Once again, Scott Morrison’s passive approach to emerging problems is costing Australian working families dearly.

His inaction has made Australian homes and small businesses a soft target for scams, while countries like the UK and Canada have seen real results from tackling this problem head-on.

Our Scambuster policy will:

• Establish a new National Anti-Scam Centre, bringing together law enforcement, regulators, banks and telcos to share real-time data about emerging threats;
• Introduce tough new industry codes on social media companies, telcos and banks to hold them to account for stopping the spread of scams
• Double funding for identity recovery services to help scam victims get their lives back on track
• Task a minister with direct responsibility for proactively taking on scammers.