ABA CEO Simon Birmingham interview on ABC Melbourne

E&OE

Ali Moore: Yes, if you use a dating app, have you ever thought about how secure it is? And if you ever wondered about the sort of anti-scam regulations that they have to comply with, the big banks say that the rules are not tough enough for dating apps, as well as things like online marketplaces and crypto exchanges. Simon Birmingham is the CEO of the Australian Banking Association, also a former Liberal senator, could well have some thoughts around the end of the coalition. Simon Birmingham, hello.

Simon Birmingham: Hello, Ali, good to be with you. Look, we might get to politics, but first I want to know what are banks worried about when it comes to things like dating apps.

Ali Moore: Ali, Australia is in a very strong world-leading position the way we're tackling scams. There's been some success in driving down some of the value of scam losses. There's equally been world-beating legislation that the Australian Parliament put through early last year, which the government is now in the throes of implementing. It takes what's known as an ecosystem approach to how scams are to be tackled. It doesn't just say banks have to stop them. Banks are up for playing our part, but it also says telecommunication companies and digital platforms like Facebook and Google have to play their part, because increasingly, that's where scams start. Of course, consumers, victims of scams, are right at the end. Banks are usually where the money is coming out of, but stopping the scam at the outset is really important, and so we're working closely with government to get this scam prevention framework embedded and make it work as effectively as possible. But in our submission to government, we've said, look, there's a couple of areas that we think in the digital platform space, you could go further, and we certainly see that dating apps are one of those. Romance scams, tragically, are one of the significant areas where Australians lost an estimated $156 million in 2024, and if we could get them in on similar terms, or at least an indication that they would be brought in to Facebook or the like, that would be another help in trying to drive scam losses down.

Ali Moore: So what are we talking about? Are we talking about people who get into an online relationship with someone and that someone says, oh, my car's broken down, I need $1,000 to fix it, could you help me? Is it that sort of thing?

Simon Birmingham: It can be that sort of thing. Often, tragically, they end up being more sophisticated than that, that they build quite significant personal relationships through a dating app service, but then ask for bigger sums of money based on greater family tragic stories and the like.

Ali Moore: So how does this… How do you change that? Like, if the scam protection framework was extended to things like dating apps, what difference would it actually make?

Simon Birmingham: Because one of the key things we're looking for in the digital space is the type of Know Your Customer-type requirements that banks already have to have, so nobody gets to open a bank account without providing ID, without being known, etc. When it comes to advertisers for investment scams or tragically, scammers operating on romance and dating apps, often they are not who they say they are, and that's why it's been so hard to stop the scams down the track, because these people aren't presenting as who they are, and so they morph from one identity to another identity, from one scam ad to another scam ad. So getting those sorts of standards in place where the digital platform initially has to know who its customer is, has to meet certain standards, or else they will be held financially liable for the scam, is a powerful way to raise their standards.

Ali Moore: Would it kill their business model? I mean, the KYC, the Know Your Customer, can be really quite extensive, quite onerous. A lot of people who hop on a dating app may not be prepared to do it.

Simon Birmingham: There is a risk, and there is, of course, a balance, and all these things need to go through proper consultation as to what is a reasonable request to be put in place for those sorts of businesses. Many of them, to give credit in terms of that dating space, many of them do give others on those dating platforms comfort. They do go through some sort of identity verification, but not all, and not necessarily the standards that make it possible. Obviously, there are other things in terms of the obligations put in place in relation to how they would respond to shutting down any identities or people where there was a suspected scam involvement. We've got the ridiculous case at present where Meta globally is being accused of knowingly letting billions of dollars churn through their revenue on scam ads. And so we're looking forward; we see the biggest gains to be made in terms of reducing scams by bringing the digital platforms like Facebook and so on into this orbit. But we don't want to see a situation where, yes, we clamp down on some things, like those fake investment scams advertised on Facebook or the like, but still see the really tragic losses occur in the romance space.

Ali Moore: So Simon Birmingham, you're a year out of politics. I can't let you go without asking. What do you make of the end of the coalition? And do you think it is the end of the coalition?

Simon Birmingham: Well, Ali, it is a notable day, and you're right. I am out of Parliament almost a year, pretty close to the day, and removed from partisan politics, but what I would say is, for the good of our democracy, the Liberal Party should seize this opportunity to pursue their policy ambitions unconstrained by another party, and specifically, I think, to do so in economic policies focused on Australia's competitiveness and the financial wellbeing of Australians, the things that have been the core equities of the party when it's been most successful.

Ali Moore: So do you think they will be stronger without the handbrake of the National Party?

Simon Birmingham: A coalition always requires compromise. The bigger your coalition, the more different interests by its very definition you are juggling. Now this will be difficult, and there's no doubt about that. It presents many questions in the run-up to a future election, but those who are still there will have to answer. But it's happened. It is what it seems to be, and those who are there for the good of choice policy debate in Australia would be best placed by seeing the opportunities to really focus in on policy, to do the type of strong reformist stuff that indeed, I look back at a time such as John Howard's leadership and the Fightback package of the day-

Ali Moore: News, the news is upon us, future, just in three seconds. Yes or no, together or apart, which is stronger?

Simon Birmingham: You need a majority to govern ultimately.

Ali Moore: Okay, we are out of time. Thanks.

ScamsSimon Birmingham