Andrew Bayly: Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister on leading the anti-scam efforts

The Government's appointed a scam-busting minister to coordinate combatting con-artists.  

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly has been named as the minister in charge of coordinating anti-scam efforts. 

New Zealand's latest State of Scams report shows more than $2.3 billion was lost this year, up from $2.1 billion last year. 

He told Ryan Bridge that there’s six ministries that deal with scams, and a lot of good work is done both within the government and also within the industry, but it’s not coordinated as well as it could be. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Scams. Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bailey has been
given a new hat to wear of sorts. He's becoming
the Minister in charge of scam busting. NETS say for
releases data today which shows almost one in five of
us have been directly affected. Scam losses could be anywhere
between two hundred million and two point three billion dollars
a year. Andrew Bailey's with me this morning. Good morning minister,

(00:21):
Good morning Ryan. Tell me is this a new job
for you.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, I've already started doing it under Commerce in Small Business.
So at the beginning of this year I wrote to
the banks asking him to put in place confirmation and
pay you, which they're going to start doing it from
December to east that it should be in place based
the next year. But formerly I've picked out the role
because there's six ministry that sort of deal with scams,

(00:46):
and decision was, why don't we just have one person
sort of coordinates between all the ministers.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
All right, so you're the scam guy. Why the discrepancy?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Why two hundred three there's anti scams by the.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Anti scam guy in two hundred mins million dollars to
two point three billion dollars. Why are the huge variance
and estimates.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
You're quoting two different things. So the report of scams
per anim over the last couple of years has been
roughly two hundred million. The estimate is that a lot
of people because they feel a shamed for some reason,
they shouldn't because the level of sophistication don't report scams.
So mbhad and estimate that's government agency has had an

(01:25):
estimate of a billion. There's more recent estimate could be
a science two billion. But whatever, the thing is a
significant financial and also more importantly, you're just as importantly
emotional cost to New Zealanders.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
So two hundred million is what we know we've been
scammed from the bands and two point three is what
people say that they've been scammed. So so what two
billion dollars worth of scams that we're too shy to
admit to.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, roughly, if the topic figure, I always worked off
a billion. But if it is a science, that's a
lot of people who are losing money, and they are different.
It's about ten different types of scams. It's romantic scams
that people know, investment scams there are another one that's
really prevalent at the moment of employment scams offering people
a job during a difficult time, and then for the

(02:15):
bank account in the meantime taking all the money out
of their bank account. It's just horrible. And of course
scams are now it's naturally driven, you know, it's not
sort of some local down the most of international plans.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Which it's going to make it very hard. I mean,
you get thousands of different scams coming in a day,
by text, by phone, by email from thousands and hundreds
of different countries. You're never going to stop this, are you?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
No? Never going to stop it? Unfortunately, and it's going
to get an increasing sophistication. You know, people talk about
AI fake scams. You know the sophistication right now, it's
really increasingly difficult. That's why people to report it. That's happened.
It shouldn't be feel embarrassed about it because part of

(02:58):
what I've got to do one is we do a
lot of good stuff across both within the government and
also with an industry, but it's not as well coordinated
as it might be. And that's the real focus I've
got to do is work with minister or colleagues and
the industry. I'm not.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I'm not inspired with hope that you're going to crash
the scam system, but because no one's managed to do
it anywhere around the world. But we've text come in
that says, what are you going to do about the
banks if you get scammed and you report it to
the bank, should they have to and burst you.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, that's one of the three things I asked and
to do back in February. So confirmation and pay has
been locked and we're still in negotiation and discussions around
compensation scammed we haven't got the certainty and then want
an updated code. And then this start was meeting with
a whole lot of Tilecommunications people. I want to make

(03:55):
sure we've got a good sort of system in place.
So there's three actors we've got to really focus on.
Obviously the bank's the last resort, but most of the
scams are hosted on social media platforms and if you
really want to get scammed buying stuff through media platform.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
But if you do get scammed, how long how long
could we get something on the compensation side of it.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, that's why I'm having discussions with the banks.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
And when's out When you're expecting an outcome from that I.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Expect that we'll be talking about that in the next
few weeks.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
All right, Andrew Batti, thank you very much for your time, Commerce,
Consumer Affairs. Now scam Buster for.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
More from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to
news Talks it'd be from five am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.