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Andrew Bayly: Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister on leading the anti-scam efforts · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Scams. Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bailey has been
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: given a new hat to wear of sorts. He's becoming
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the Minister in charge of scam busting. NETS say for
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: releases data today which shows almost one in five of
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: us have been directly affected. Scam losses could be anywhere
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: between two hundred million and two point three billion dollars
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  Speaker 1: a year. Andrew Bailey's with me this morning. Good morning minister,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Good morning Ryan. Tell me is this a new job
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: for you.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I've already started doing it under Commerce in Small Business.
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  Speaker 2: So at the beginning of this year I wrote to
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  Speaker 2: the banks asking him to put in place confirmation and
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: pay you, which they're going to start doing it from
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  Speaker 2: December to east that it should be in place based
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  Speaker 2: the next year. But formerly I've picked out the role
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  Speaker 2: because there's six ministry that sort of deal with scams,
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  Speaker 2: and decision was, why don't we just have one person
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  Speaker 2: sort of coordinates between all the ministers.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: All right, so you're the scam guy. Why the discrepancy?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Why two hundred three there's anti scams by the.
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  Speaker 1: Anti scam guy in two hundred mins million dollars to
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  Speaker 1: two point three billion dollars. Why are the huge variance
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  Speaker 1: and estimates.
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  Speaker 2: You're quoting two different things. So the report of scams
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  Speaker 2: per anim over the last couple of years has been
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  Speaker 2: roughly two hundred million. The estimate is that a lot
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  Speaker 2: of people because they feel a shamed for some reason,
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  Speaker 2: they shouldn't because the level of sophistication don't report scams.
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  Speaker 2: So mbhad and estimate that's government agency has had an
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  Speaker 2: estimate of a billion. There's more recent estimate could be
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  Speaker 2: a science two billion. But whatever, the thing is a
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  Speaker 2: significant financial and also more importantly, you're just as importantly
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  Speaker 2: emotional cost to New Zealanders.
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  Speaker 1: So two hundred million is what we know we've been
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: scammed from the bands and two point three is what
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  Speaker 1: people say that they've been scammed. So so what two
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  Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of scams that we're too shy to
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  Speaker 1: admit to.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, roughly, if the topic figure, I always worked off
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  Speaker 2: a billion. But if it is a science, that's a
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  Speaker 2: lot of people who are losing money, and they are different.
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  Speaker 2: It's about ten different types of scams. It's romantic scams
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  Speaker 2: that people know, investment scams there are another one that's
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  Speaker 2: really prevalent at the moment of employment scams offering people
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  Speaker 2: a job during a difficult time, and then for the
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  Speaker 2: bank account in the meantime taking all the money out
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  Speaker 2: of their bank account. It's just horrible. And of course
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  Speaker 2: scams are now it's naturally driven, you know, it's not
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  Speaker 2: sort of some local down the most of international plans.
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  Speaker 1: Which it's going to make it very hard. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: you get thousands of different scams coming in a day,
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  Speaker 1: by text, by phone, by email from thousands and hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of different countries. You're never going to stop this, are you?
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: No? Never going to stop it? Unfortunately, and it's going
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  Speaker 2: to get an increasing sophistication. You know, people talk about
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  Speaker 2: AI fake scams. You know the sophistication right now, it's
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  Speaker 2: really increasingly difficult. That's why people to report it. That's happened.
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  Speaker 2: It shouldn't be feel embarrassed about it because part of
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  Speaker 2: what I've got to do one is we do a
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: lot of good stuff across both within the government and
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  Speaker 2: also with an industry, but it's not as well coordinated
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  Speaker 2: as it might be. And that's the real focus I've
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  Speaker 2: got to do is work with minister or colleagues and
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  Speaker 2: the industry. I'm not.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not inspired with hope that you're going to crash
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the scam system, but because no one's managed to do
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  Speaker 1: it anywhere around the world. But we've text come in
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that says, what are you going to do about the
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  Speaker 1: banks if you get scammed and you report it to
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  Speaker 1: the bank, should they have to and burst you.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Well, that's one of the three things I asked and
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  Speaker 2: to do back in February. So confirmation and pay has
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  Speaker 2: been locked and we're still in negotiation and discussions around
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  Speaker 2: compensation scammed we haven't got the certainty and then want
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  Speaker 2: an updated code. And then this start was meeting with
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  Speaker 2: a whole lot of Tilecommunications people. I want to make
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  Speaker 2: sure we've got a good sort of system in place.
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  Speaker 2: So there's three actors we've got to really focus on.
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  Speaker 2: Obviously the bank's the last resort, but most of the
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  Speaker 2: scams are hosted on social media platforms and if you
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: really want to get scammed buying stuff through media platform.
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  Speaker 1: But if you do get scammed, how long how long
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  Speaker 1: could we get something on the compensation side of it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Well, that's why I'm having discussions with the banks.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And when's out When you're expecting an outcome from that I.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Expect that we'll be talking about that in the next
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  Speaker 2: few weeks.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Andrew Batti, thank you very much for your time, Commerce,
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  Speaker 1: Consumer Affairs. Now scam Buster for.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: More from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to
• 4:35
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• 4:39
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