E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: myGov scams; accessing Centrelink; 3000 new Services Australia staff

DAVID BEVAN, HOST: Bill Shorten is the Minister for the NDIS and Government Services. He joins us now, good morning, Bill Shorten.

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICESHORTEN: Good morning.

BEVAN: Minister, thank you for doing this. I understand you're on holidays.

SHORTEN: Oh no. I did an announcement this morning but it's the Melbourne Cup tomorrow. So, you know I just want to - this afternoon I admit, I'll be trying to follow the form and work things out.

BEVAN: Well, we appreciate your time, sir. Okay, now, Bill Shorten, I am lucky in that while my tax every year is extremely simple, sort of, you know, it involves about three pieces of paper, I still go to an accountant because I'm not sure how to do it, and I have two, we have two children in their 20s who can handle the streaming service account, and if I need to buy anything online, I just call them up and they do it for me. So, I'm a very lucky man. I have actually very little to do with the world of the internet, but a lot of our listeners, they're not so lucky. And today we learn that more than 4500 myGov scams have been confirmed. Indeed, you can now go on the dark web and buy box kits which are guides to how to scam people through myGov. I wonder how on earth are you meant to protect people?

SHORTEN: Well, we can, but let's describe the problem and interviews like this help protect people, David. Scammers are - what's happening is there's criminals, malicious actors are making it easy for other criminals to generate and recreate myGov phishing sites. That's p-h-i-s-h-i-n-g. And what they're doing is they're pretending to be an official myGov communication. So last year, calendar year, there were 450, 760 unique phishing attempts, but now there's been 4500 by the end of August. So, what's happening is criminals are spreading. They're selling the technology of how to try and impersonate a person on myGov.

But the answer, though, is this: if you get something from myGov which says you must download a link, don't. So, we will never send out information to you requiring you to download a link from us. So that's the answer. But of course, people are busy. They don't look, you know, that's understandable, but it's just you've got to learn when you're on the internet that not every link is real, and you've just got to watch it. And the crooks are getting sophisticated. But if people think that they've inadvertently - this isn't hacking, by the way, this doesn't mean that the criminals are in the government software and systems. What it is, is these criminal actors get an individual to give the criminal actor private details, which then the criminal actor will try and use. The problem isn't so much that they're getting through into myGov then, but the problem is people often use the same password for different accounts because that's easier to remember. So, when you give them, you download the link and you put in your passwords, these criminal actors go, aha, this might be David's password for another account. So, they're just trying to hoover up information so they can impersonate you into government systems or banks or what have you.

BEVAN: Now Rob has called. Good morning. Rob, you've got a question for Bill Shorten.

CALLER: Yes, David. It comes to the getting in contact with Centrelink, and it also ties into the scam talk you had earlier as well. Now I've had to, on numerous occasions recently, ring the 13 - six-digit number that to get hold of Centrelink to correct things, change address and that sort of stuff. And you go through the prompt menu, it gets to the end of it says sorry we're busy and it hangs up on you. So, then you ring back, oh, we see you've tried to ring us. We know you've tried to ring us. Hangs up on you. So, you've basically got to wait till the next day to try again. So, one of my cases was rent relief so I ended up having to drive all the way and, you know, half hour plus each way, to get to her service centre to correct my rent assistance payment reinstated.

BEVAN: Okay. Well, Bill Shorten, what do you say to the Rob's of this world?

SHORTEN: So that's a terrible experience. I'm sorry that you've had that, but I've got something else I can say to Rob, which I couldn't have said yesterday. This morning, you know, you said I was on leave, and I said, no, it's working this morning. This morning I've announced 3000 extra people to work at Centrelink to handle phone calls and payment delays. So, I'm not saying Rob will see it improve overnight, but the public service has been wound down to the smallest number of people for the Australian population ever. So, we've, the Labor government, the Albanese government, has made a decision that we've got to put that right because accessing Medicare, childcare or old age pension or Newstart, you need your money, not like next month. You need it much sooner. So, the waiting times that Rob's experienced are a common problem. But I've managed to convince my colleagues to give us the resources to put 3000 extra people on. We've onboarded about 1000 of them. It'll take another couple of months to get everyone up and train them in the systems. But hopefully, I mean, it's taken years to get it to this poor level, but hopefully Rob and others will see in the course of next year and improvement. In fact, we're probably going to put about 370, approximately, extra staff into South Australia, into Adelaide.

BEVAN: Oh, okay. Well, that's a lot of jobs and 3000 staff overall. That's got to make a difference. Bill Shorten -

SHORTEN: I certainly hope so.

BEVAN: Yeah. Bill Shorten before you go. The latest poll out today from Newspoll shows that the Labor government is basically back where it was at the last election, 52 to 48. But your Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, he has burnt a lot of political capital in the last few months in terms of better performance and a better PM. How do you read the polls?

SHORTEN: All with a grain of salt. I'm not saying there's not a reaction after the Voice referendum, so I don't ignore them. But I also recognise that at the moment, cost of living is a real crisis for people. Your petrol, your energy, the mortgages, you know, interest rates going up. Goodness knows what will happen tomorrow. So, people are doing it tough. And when people are doing it tough, governments don't tend to be as popular. But common-sense announcements like I've made today, we just want, I just want people to be able to get the money they're owed quicker into their accounts. So, I think we've got our right priorities. But I do understand in the climate of tough cost of living, politicians aren't popular. Not that we're popular most times.

BEVAN: Well, no, but the point here is that the Prime Minister has burnt a lot of capital, so there's not much left there. There’s not, there's not there's not a lot of tolerance left for Anthony Albanese.

SHORTEN: Oh, again, I take that with a grain of salt. No, I don't share that view. I think what he's doing in China at the moment is excellent. You know, we'll negotiate where we can, and we'll disagree where we have to. But I think it's important. And he was with President Biden last week. There's a lot going on in the world. And we need a leader who is engaged in that. But I also get cost of living is a gigantic issue. So that's why stuff like we're talking about today is important. You know, I take some of those numbers with a grain of salt.

BEVAN: Bill Shorten, thank you for your time.

SHORTEN: Yeah. Thank you. And please, next caller, I can't always promise every one of your callers that we'll put 3000 people on to fix the problem, but timing is everything. And it's just it's funny that we've announced it today on your show. There you go.

BEVAN: Thank you very much for your time. Bill Shorten, Minister for the NDIS and Government Services. So, I think he's saying about 2,300 of those jobs should be in South Australia, but overall, 3000 extra staff for services.