August 28, 2025 • 18 mins
Investment scams empowered by AI are going to get worse in the years ahead - and no amount of regulation is going to stop 'bad actors' inside finance.
Self-defence in the form of financial literacy is the answer: investors need it, kids in school need it, but the government has put the issue on the back burner. It’s time for a change.
Tracey West, financial education manager at Ecstra, the financial literacy foundation joins Associate Editor - James Kirby in this episode.
In today's episode, we cover:
- Scam watch - What investors need to know
- Why the First Guardian scandal is a taste of things to come
- Should schools make financial literacy mandatory?
- How AI 'fakes' will drive a new wave of investment fraud
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm
James Kirkby. Welcome aboard everybody. A financial scams and large
scale fraud where investors lose some or all of their
money are back unfortunately on the agenda. More than that,
they are being empowered, enhanced, accelerated by the arrival of
(00:35):
AI as. Someone who's really close to what's happening and
what you need to know in this area is Tracy West,
who is the education officer at EXTRA, the Financial Literacy
Foundation and a recognized expert in the field. Hi, Tracy,
how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Good morning, James, I'm well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I was listening to a webcast you did yourself actually
this week on this area you hosted and had variety
of people on. And you know, it's really extraordinary the
pace at which this is happening. How certain sort of
concepts that you and your circle think are sort of
standardized now are new to me even though I'm in
(01:17):
financial area, but I'm not in financial crime or I'm
not watching financial fraud. That is not my subject matter,
but it's so important for investors to know about it.
I mean, the first thing I want to put on
the table for our listeners, just in case they don't know,
is that Australians their standards a financial literacy, their ability
(01:39):
to understand finance, is actually falling on an international basis, right,
it's actually declining. Why is that? Have you any sense
why that is.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So? Yes, when we do put some questions out there
that measure adults financial literacy levels, we do find that
those scores are declining over time. There are many reasons
for that. I think the world is much more complex
than it used to be. So when things are simple
before banks were deregulated, we have the ability. So the
(02:12):
baby boomers and older generations have the ability to learn
things incrementally, whereas young people coming into the world these
days are faced with complexity straight away in their faces.
So complex terminologies. If you're buying a mobile phone contract,
for example, there's lots to know there around your obligations
(02:33):
to repay fees, charges, comparing different products and services. So
the complexity is there straight away, and I think we
are getting quite overwhelmed with unpacking those essential elements of
what we need to know and the skills we need
to be able to make those decisions.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
This is it. The skills we need, I mean thinking
just about artificial intelligence. It's all fine if you know
the questions to ask, but if you don't, you're at
sea just as much as ever. And the dark patterns
where these are these established bad behavior basically which is
empowered by AI. But just before we get more deeply
(03:13):
into that, Australians have fallen behind on global standards of
financial literacy. And as I understand, that is because that
the broader issue policy of financial literacy was transferred from
ASAK to Treasury and basically nothing has happened for several
years in that area. And why that is the case
we are declining in the international standards. Also it's the
(03:35):
case that tell me if I'm wrong about this, men
are worse than women and younger men are worst of all.
Is that broadly how it goes other.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Way around, James. So men tend to school higher on
these tests of financial just say, than women do. So
women are the ones that have the gap in knowledge
and confidence to make financial decis So from a young age,
men seem more inclined to read about money and that
(04:06):
can come from the breadwinner models that have been entrenched
in the household. In these stereotypes where they understand that
their role in the household is to make money and
to make the big financial decisions for the household. So
from that feeds through into an interest in learning about
money as well as there are other things like a
(04:26):
confidence around mathematical ability that means they feel like they
can handle the decisions that need to be made and
do the math involved in them. So there's a whole
range of things that leads into this gender gap.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
So statistically, the men perform better on literacy than women
and they are more confident. Okay, but one thing when
we look at that, then, in terms of the financial
literacy across the board, have we only evidence then that
men are less likely to be scammed or fall for
fraud than women.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
That is also really interesting. So scam Watch, do you
have a data dashboard that for the listeners out there.
It's really interesting to go have a look at that
data dashboard on the scam Watch website. And they do
report gender differences in the reporting statistics. So when you
look at the reporting statistics broadly across all scams, their
gender differences and reporting is about equal. But when you
(05:23):
look at investment scams, more men are reporting investment scams
now a bit of underreporting or low reporting that we're
not aware of. So there are pro courts that are
not represented in the scam data because they're not reporting.
And that's around all of those shame stigmas and things
associated with being scammed. But yes, for investment scams, men
(05:47):
are reporting higher levels of being scammed than women.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes, I expect. So now here's what our listeners would
be most interested in, which is the acceleration of investment
scandals and whether financial literacy will defend us as investors
(06:13):
from scams and from fraud. Because it seems to me,
regardless of the amount of regulation that we have, regardless
of alleged protections, it never ends. I think we might
as well be realistic and say, listen, it's never going
to end, right. There's always going to be bad actors.
There's a four trillion dollars superannuation system, for instance. There
(06:36):
is always going to be people trying to carve some
money out of that for illgotten gains. And a big
scandal is unfolding, biggest in possibly two decades, which is
called first Conlagen. And the surprise there is not that
it occurred, but that so many big names were involved
that what appeared to be a regulated conventional area was
turned out is looking allegedly like a substantial scandal. Do
(07:01):
you think there are ways investors can lift their financial
literacy to protect themselves?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Really big question there, James. So, investment scams are by
far ahead in terms of the losses reported than any
other type of scam. Billion dollars out of two billion
dollars lost in total scams reported in twenty twenty four,
A big, big chunk of money being lost by consumers
out there to investment scams. Now, can financial literacy protect us?
(07:32):
So let's talk about scam literacy. Perhaps quite of the
checks that you could do to verify the authenticity of
this offer is to check RL sites. Do they look legitimate?
Put them in the Asset Professional Register, see if they
have an AFL FSL license. So for that big scam
(07:55):
that you're talking about, potential investors would have done some
of those checks. Looks legitimate, It was a legitimate business.
So that is one type. Other types more normal scams,
if I can use that word. They're also really hard
to detach because scammers have gotten so good and their
tech skills are just so out there that they can
(08:17):
create these fake websites. They can make it look like
your deposits are going into their account. They can make
it look like you're getting returns on investments in those websites.
They can give you some trust payments, So that's those
little payments that make it look like I got some returns,
and then they start asking you for more money, so
you need to pay more money to unlock the next
(08:39):
offer or to get this and to get that. So
they can look so authentic. They're using high profile people
like Scott paip AI generated images, people that you might
associate with being trustworthy, as another tactic to sell.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Their tell us. Then about artificial intelligence and the arrival
of AI, will that bring more of these first Carrigent
type scandals? Will it accelerate and enhance their ability basically
to draw money from investors.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Look, it's quite overwhelming to think about how good that
technology is and how they can utilize it. Perhaps on
video calls, advertising voice conversations that we're having. They can
set up bots to do that. I don't know where
that's going to land, but certainly a lot of prevention
(09:34):
and detection activity needs to go into this space.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So do you think it's going to get worse, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It's going to get worse. So scammers are everywhere and
they are using every tactic in the toolbox to get
people and sucked into their scams.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Now, you were just saying about what could be done,
and I mentioned at the start about I think it's
fully accepted. It's a fact that financial literacy, the national
capability financial Literacy strategy, which was the key thing which
financial literacy was dependent upon within government, was moved Framatic
to Treasury sometime ago and basically in the period since
(10:16):
that has happened, Australia's financial literacy standards have declined on
international measures. We have a new Financial Services Minister, Daniel Malino.
We have a new Senator who's just been newly minted
this week. Did he's made in speech in Parliament this
week Richard Dowling, who has brought up financial literacy as
(10:37):
a key issue for him in Parliament. What could government,
this government do here that they're not doing to improve
our own literacy as investors.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Because we don't have this umbrella national strategy, we don't
have a mechanism by which actions are defined, planned and
reported against. New Zealand have a new National Financial Capability
Strategy out. It's quite a short document.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
It has its.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Priority goals, defines a three year plan and with clear
responsibilities of who is assigned to achieve that plan. Really
nice model, So something simple at that would help bring
us all together that are interested in doing this work
and set some goals and some targets.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Now on the next segment, folks, what we're going to
talk about is what Tracy and her cohort do in
schools around the country. And I don't know about you,
but when I was in school, it was never mentioned
ever about financial literacy or navigating finance in any fashion.
(11:51):
And it's also a thing that I really want to
see if what Tracy says about this. But it seems
to me that who we have to get at, who
we have to support in financial literacy are not the
kids that are good at matts or accountancy. It's the
other kids. Let's talk about that in a moment. Hello
(12:22):
and welcome back to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm
James Kirby talking to Tracy West, who is the Financial
Education Officer at extra ecstr that's the Financial Literacy Foundation
And just folks, as a point of disclosure, I should
tell you that I'm on the board of Extra, but
only very recently, just joined this year, so that everyone
(12:45):
knows that, and that's how I met Tracy at a
meeting there. So tell us very broadly the big numbers.
What EXTRA is all about is getting financial literacy into
the schools and how many students are involved and how
many do you guys run?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So I manage the top money with EXTRA Foundation Workshop
program for schools. It's a free program and we send
facilitators into schools to run an hour long class and
it's age appropriate so the content matches the year level
that we're booked in for. So we actually participate and
go to all types of schools James High Ses schools
(13:24):
as well as Lower Ses schools. In fact, we offer
regional and remote road shows to make sure that we
are targeting a broad range of schools across Australia each year,
so every school is important to us. Let's say, and
the program is going really well. It's in its fourth
year of operations now and we are continuing to expand.
(13:48):
So we do primarily face to face workshops. We do
offer online workshops as well, so really interesting, really great pickup.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
You get specialist teachers into the classrooms, standing in front
of the kids, and you are teaching them something that's
never been on the agenda before, which is financial literacy.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
We do we get our training facilitators in that and
what we do, and I think what teachers tell us
what they see is we talk about money differently, so
we talk about values and aligning your spending decisions to
your values. For example, we give them tools of how
to have conversations about money. So because we're there for
a limited time period, we don't get into technical concepts
(14:29):
and details. We do talk about compound interest. In the
older age groups, we talk about superannuation and reading pace
flips and your rights at work. So we cover a
variety of topics across the range of modules, but we
don't get into the nitty gritty because we teachers can
do that. So teachers pick up of what we've started.
We spark the conversation, We provide some different language to
(14:50):
talk about money with, and then teachers follow on and
support and connect that to what they're doing in the classroom.
So it's a really important partnership I think that we
do have with teachers, and then they also see what
questions students are asking and what they're interested in. So
we will always have a young boy, for example, put
up your hand and ask about cryptocurrency. We also have
(15:14):
young people talking to us around the spending of online,
of the gaming currency and how they got into travel
from their parents for spending that money. There's lots of
stories and the teachers can pick up on those stories
and have their conversations.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
These are the bridges, if you like, of engagement in games,
crypto scams, I assume of all sorts.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yes, So we have started a new workshop actually on
scams based on responses we were receiving from students and
teachers saying what topics they would like to learn more about.
Scams is one of those, so we started a new
workshop called Becoming Scam Saving Right.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And this is, by the way, folks, National Anti Scams Week,
which is one of the other reasons that I have
Tracy on the show this week. How about the teachers themselves,
This stuff is not on the curriculum. This is in
a way you're asking them to do more work. Is
that a problem.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So teachers are very busy, very crowded curriculum, so yes,
finding the time and gaps in there is an issue
as well as teacher confidence to talk about money, and
they are keenly aware of financial hardship that their students
might be experiencing, like not having breakfast, not being able
to afford the school uniforms. So talking about money in
(16:32):
a generic way or how to approach that conversation in
the classroom is challenging and that aren't good supports to
help teachers to do that because we don't have this
top down strategy to help direct and provide the financial
support needed. So the UK is actually a really interesting
case study because in twenty seven states in the US
(16:56):
now they have mandated personal finance in high school, so
students have to experience some level of personal finance in
high school.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Do the majority of states in the US have it
on the mandated on the curriculum?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, they do. There are different degrees of it, so
some states will require schools to have a semester long course.
Other states will say you have to put it in
there somewhere, right, And this has been going on for
the last ten or so years now, so they've gotten
to the point where reports are coming out saying we've
gotten a long way, but teachers still need extra supports
(17:33):
with better webshoop materials, better professional development. So I can
see here in Australia that the path we have to
go down is going to need some direction from government
to require this to be elevated within schools, and then
there are going to need to be some supports to
help teachers to know how to do this.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So there you are, a minister, if you're listening, it's
loud and clear. We need a national financial literacy capability strategy.
Believe it or not, there was one. It's been put
on the shelf. It's gathering dustin treasury. Let's revive it.
There is a new minister in Minister Melino. There is
a new Senator, a Richard Dowling, pushing for it. Perhaps
this is the moment. Tracy, terrific to talk to you.
(18:15):
Thank you very much for coming on the show. Great
to have you, thank you, You're welcome. That was Tracy West.
Let's have some emails. We will catch up with questions
next week the money Puzzle at the Australian dot com
dot au. Talk to you soon.
Hello, and welcome to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm
James Kirkby. Welcome aboard everybody. A financial scams and large
scale fraud where investors lose some or all of their
money are back unfortunately on the agenda. More than that,
they are being empowered, enhanced, accelerated by the arrival of
(00:35):
AI as. Someone who's really close to what's happening and
what you need to know in this area is Tracy West,
who is the education officer at EXTRA, the Financial Literacy
Foundation and a recognized expert in the field. Hi, Tracy,
how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Good morning, James, I'm well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I was listening to a webcast you did yourself actually
this week on this area you hosted and had variety
of people on. And you know, it's really extraordinary the
pace at which this is happening. How certain sort of
concepts that you and your circle think are sort of
standardized now are new to me even though I'm in
(01:17):
financial area, but I'm not in financial crime or I'm
not watching financial fraud. That is not my subject matter,
but it's so important for investors to know about it.
I mean, the first thing I want to put on
the table for our listeners, just in case they don't know,
is that Australians their standards a financial literacy, their ability
(01:39):
to understand finance, is actually falling on an international basis, right,
it's actually declining. Why is that? Have you any sense
why that is.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So? Yes, when we do put some questions out there
that measure adults financial literacy levels, we do find that
those scores are declining over time. There are many reasons
for that. I think the world is much more complex
than it used to be. So when things are simple
before banks were deregulated, we have the ability. So the
(02:12):
baby boomers and older generations have the ability to learn
things incrementally, whereas young people coming into the world these
days are faced with complexity straight away in their faces.
So complex terminologies. If you're buying a mobile phone contract,
for example, there's lots to know there around your obligations
(02:33):
to repay fees, charges, comparing different products and services. So
the complexity is there straight away, and I think we
are getting quite overwhelmed with unpacking those essential elements of
what we need to know and the skills we need
to be able to make those decisions.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
This is it. The skills we need, I mean thinking
just about artificial intelligence. It's all fine if you know
the questions to ask, but if you don't, you're at
sea just as much as ever. And the dark patterns
where these are these established bad behavior basically which is
empowered by AI. But just before we get more deeply
(03:13):
into that, Australians have fallen behind on global standards of
financial literacy. And as I understand, that is because that
the broader issue policy of financial literacy was transferred from
ASAK to Treasury and basically nothing has happened for several
years in that area. And why that is the case
we are declining in the international standards. Also it's the
(03:35):
case that tell me if I'm wrong about this, men
are worse than women and younger men are worst of all.
Is that broadly how it goes other.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Way around, James. So men tend to school higher on
these tests of financial just say, than women do. So
women are the ones that have the gap in knowledge
and confidence to make financial decis So from a young age,
men seem more inclined to read about money and that
(04:06):
can come from the breadwinner models that have been entrenched
in the household. In these stereotypes where they understand that
their role in the household is to make money and
to make the big financial decisions for the household. So
from that feeds through into an interest in learning about
money as well as there are other things like a
(04:26):
confidence around mathematical ability that means they feel like they
can handle the decisions that need to be made and
do the math involved in them. So there's a whole
range of things that leads into this gender gap.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
So statistically, the men perform better on literacy than women
and they are more confident. Okay, but one thing when
we look at that, then, in terms of the financial
literacy across the board, have we only evidence then that
men are less likely to be scammed or fall for
fraud than women.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
That is also really interesting. So scam Watch, do you
have a data dashboard that for the listeners out there.
It's really interesting to go have a look at that
data dashboard on the scam Watch website. And they do
report gender differences in the reporting statistics. So when you
look at the reporting statistics broadly across all scams, their
gender differences and reporting is about equal. But when you
(05:23):
look at investment scams, more men are reporting investment scams
now a bit of underreporting or low reporting that we're
not aware of. So there are pro courts that are
not represented in the scam data because they're not reporting.
And that's around all of those shame stigmas and things
associated with being scammed. But yes, for investment scams, men
(05:47):
are reporting higher levels of being scammed than women.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes, I expect. So now here's what our listeners would
be most interested in, which is the acceleration of investment
scandals and whether financial literacy will defend us as investors
(06:13):
from scams and from fraud. Because it seems to me,
regardless of the amount of regulation that we have, regardless
of alleged protections, it never ends. I think we might
as well be realistic and say, listen, it's never going
to end, right. There's always going to be bad actors.
There's a four trillion dollars superannuation system, for instance. There
(06:36):
is always going to be people trying to carve some
money out of that for illgotten gains. And a big
scandal is unfolding, biggest in possibly two decades, which is
called first Conlagen. And the surprise there is not that
it occurred, but that so many big names were involved
that what appeared to be a regulated conventional area was
turned out is looking allegedly like a substantial scandal. Do
(07:01):
you think there are ways investors can lift their financial
literacy to protect themselves?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Really big question there, James. So, investment scams are by
far ahead in terms of the losses reported than any
other type of scam. Billion dollars out of two billion
dollars lost in total scams reported in twenty twenty four,
A big, big chunk of money being lost by consumers
out there to investment scams. Now, can financial literacy protect us?
(07:32):
So let's talk about scam literacy. Perhaps quite of the
checks that you could do to verify the authenticity of
this offer is to check RL sites. Do they look legitimate?
Put them in the Asset Professional Register, see if they
have an AFL FSL license. So for that big scam
(07:55):
that you're talking about, potential investors would have done some
of those checks. Looks legitimate, It was a legitimate business.
So that is one type. Other types more normal scams,
if I can use that word. They're also really hard
to detach because scammers have gotten so good and their
tech skills are just so out there that they can
(08:17):
create these fake websites. They can make it look like
your deposits are going into their account. They can make
it look like you're getting returns on investments in those websites.
They can give you some trust payments, So that's those
little payments that make it look like I got some returns,
and then they start asking you for more money, so
you need to pay more money to unlock the next
(08:39):
offer or to get this and to get that. So
they can look so authentic. They're using high profile people
like Scott paip AI generated images, people that you might
associate with being trustworthy, as another tactic to sell.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Their tell us. Then about artificial intelligence and the arrival
of AI, will that bring more of these first Carrigent
type scandals? Will it accelerate and enhance their ability basically
to draw money from investors.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Look, it's quite overwhelming to think about how good that
technology is and how they can utilize it. Perhaps on
video calls, advertising voice conversations that we're having. They can
set up bots to do that. I don't know where
that's going to land, but certainly a lot of prevention
(09:34):
and detection activity needs to go into this space.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So do you think it's going to get worse, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It's going to get worse. So scammers are everywhere and
they are using every tactic in the toolbox to get
people and sucked into their scams.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Now, you were just saying about what could be done,
and I mentioned at the start about I think it's
fully accepted. It's a fact that financial literacy, the national
capability financial Literacy strategy, which was the key thing which
financial literacy was dependent upon within government, was moved Framatic
to Treasury sometime ago and basically in the period since
(10:16):
that has happened, Australia's financial literacy standards have declined on
international measures. We have a new Financial Services Minister, Daniel Malino.
We have a new Senator who's just been newly minted
this week. Did he's made in speech in Parliament this
week Richard Dowling, who has brought up financial literacy as
(10:37):
a key issue for him in Parliament. What could government,
this government do here that they're not doing to improve
our own literacy as investors.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Because we don't have this umbrella national strategy, we don't
have a mechanism by which actions are defined, planned and
reported against. New Zealand have a new National Financial Capability
Strategy out. It's quite a short document.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
It has its.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Priority goals, defines a three year plan and with clear
responsibilities of who is assigned to achieve that plan. Really
nice model, So something simple at that would help bring
us all together that are interested in doing this work
and set some goals and some targets.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Now on the next segment, folks, what we're going to
talk about is what Tracy and her cohort do in
schools around the country. And I don't know about you,
but when I was in school, it was never mentioned
ever about financial literacy or navigating finance in any fashion.
(11:51):
And it's also a thing that I really want to
see if what Tracy says about this. But it seems
to me that who we have to get at, who
we have to support in financial literacy are not the
kids that are good at matts or accountancy. It's the
other kids. Let's talk about that in a moment. Hello
(12:22):
and welcome back to The Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm
James Kirby talking to Tracy West, who is the Financial
Education Officer at extra ecstr that's the Financial Literacy Foundation
And just folks, as a point of disclosure, I should
tell you that I'm on the board of Extra, but
only very recently, just joined this year, so that everyone
(12:45):
knows that, and that's how I met Tracy at a
meeting there. So tell us very broadly the big numbers.
What EXTRA is all about is getting financial literacy into
the schools and how many students are involved and how
many do you guys run?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So I manage the top money with EXTRA Foundation Workshop
program for schools. It's a free program and we send
facilitators into schools to run an hour long class and
it's age appropriate so the content matches the year level
that we're booked in for. So we actually participate and
go to all types of schools James High Ses schools
(13:24):
as well as Lower Ses schools. In fact, we offer
regional and remote road shows to make sure that we
are targeting a broad range of schools across Australia each year,
so every school is important to us. Let's say, and
the program is going really well. It's in its fourth
year of operations now and we are continuing to expand.
(13:48):
So we do primarily face to face workshops. We do
offer online workshops as well, so really interesting, really great pickup.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
You get specialist teachers into the classrooms, standing in front
of the kids, and you are teaching them something that's
never been on the agenda before, which is financial literacy.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
We do we get our training facilitators in that and
what we do, and I think what teachers tell us
what they see is we talk about money differently, so
we talk about values and aligning your spending decisions to
your values. For example, we give them tools of how
to have conversations about money. So because we're there for
a limited time period, we don't get into technical concepts
(14:29):
and details. We do talk about compound interest. In the
older age groups, we talk about superannuation and reading pace
flips and your rights at work. So we cover a
variety of topics across the range of modules, but we
don't get into the nitty gritty because we teachers can
do that. So teachers pick up of what we've started.
We spark the conversation, We provide some different language to
(14:50):
talk about money with, and then teachers follow on and
support and connect that to what they're doing in the classroom.
So it's a really important partnership I think that we
do have with teachers, and then they also see what
questions students are asking and what they're interested in. So
we will always have a young boy, for example, put
up your hand and ask about cryptocurrency. We also have
(15:14):
young people talking to us around the spending of online,
of the gaming currency and how they got into travel
from their parents for spending that money. There's lots of
stories and the teachers can pick up on those stories
and have their conversations.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
These are the bridges, if you like, of engagement in games,
crypto scams, I assume of all sorts.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yes, So we have started a new workshop actually on
scams based on responses we were receiving from students and
teachers saying what topics they would like to learn more about.
Scams is one of those, so we started a new
workshop called Becoming Scam Saving Right.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And this is, by the way, folks, National Anti Scams Week,
which is one of the other reasons that I have
Tracy on the show this week. How about the teachers themselves,
This stuff is not on the curriculum. This is in
a way you're asking them to do more work. Is
that a problem.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So teachers are very busy, very crowded curriculum, so yes,
finding the time and gaps in there is an issue
as well as teacher confidence to talk about money, and
they are keenly aware of financial hardship that their students
might be experiencing, like not having breakfast, not being able
to afford the school uniforms. So talking about money in
(16:32):
a generic way or how to approach that conversation in
the classroom is challenging and that aren't good supports to
help teachers to do that because we don't have this
top down strategy to help direct and provide the financial
support needed. So the UK is actually a really interesting
case study because in twenty seven states in the US
(16:56):
now they have mandated personal finance in high school, so
students have to experience some level of personal finance in
high school.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Do the majority of states in the US have it
on the mandated on the curriculum?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, they do. There are different degrees of it, so
some states will require schools to have a semester long course.
Other states will say you have to put it in
there somewhere, right, And this has been going on for
the last ten or so years now, so they've gotten
to the point where reports are coming out saying we've
gotten a long way, but teachers still need extra supports
(17:33):
with better webshoop materials, better professional development. So I can
see here in Australia that the path we have to
go down is going to need some direction from government
to require this to be elevated within schools, and then
there are going to need to be some supports to
help teachers to know how to do this.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So there you are, a minister, if you're listening, it's
loud and clear. We need a national financial literacy capability strategy.
Believe it or not, there was one. It's been put
on the shelf. It's gathering dustin treasury. Let's revive it.
There is a new minister in Minister Melino. There is
a new Senator, a Richard Dowling, pushing for it. Perhaps
this is the moment. Tracy, terrific to talk to you.
(18:15):
Thank you very much for coming on the show. Great
to have you, thank you, You're welcome. That was Tracy West.
Let's have some emails. We will catch up with questions
next week the money Puzzle at the Australian dot com
dot au. Talk to you soon.
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