The tough approach of Australia’s regulators and policymakers towards big tech is paying off for its citizens, who are getting far stronger protections than New Zealanders. Duncan Greive explains.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced it will finally begin verifying those advertising financial services in Australia, with the Guardian reporting that from February 2025 it will require a government ID and proof of licensing from such advertisers. The move comes after a raft of celebrity impersonation scam ads have infested its platform, leading to lawsuits from some of the individuals involved and tens of millions of dollars in fines after cases brought by Australia’s competition regulator, the ACCC.

It’s being welcomed by those on the receiving end of scams in this part of the world. “We’re pleased to see Meta introduce verification for financial advertisers in Australia,” a spokesperson for Westpac told The Spinoff. Kiwibank estimates that 40% of scams originate on social media, the vast majority on Facebook, with two major banks contemplating severing ties with the platform over persistent inaction in New Zealand. Scams are an increasing blight on our modern digital lives, with at least $200m a year lost – though according to Netsafe, underreporting means the true annual figure for New Zealand could be as high as $2.3bn.

Andrew Bayly was recently appointed “minister for combatting scams”, part of his consumer affairs portfolio, and has spent much of the year chastising banks for a perceived failure to protect their customers. He described himself in a statement to The Spinoff as “very interested” in what he described as Meta’s “commonsense” move. He pointed out that “Google has partnered with the Financial Markets Authority to establish a similar service on their platform, so it is entirely possible Meta could do the same.”

One rule for Australia, another for New Zealand

It could. But it won’t. When reached for comment, Meta confirmed that it had no plans to roll out a similar verification system in this country. “It would apply to New Zealand-based financial services businesses if they want to serve financial services ads to Australians, but not to New Zealand users,” said Meta spokesperson Ben Cheong. Westpac’s spokesperson told The Spinoff it would “encourage [Meta] to follow Google’s lead and quickly do the same here.” The bank will be disappointed. When asked if there were any plans to roll advertiser verification out in New Zealand in future, Cheong replied “we don’t have anything further to add at the moment.” 

The situation reveals again the stark gap between the muscular approach toward big tech from both the ACCC and the Australian government, contrasting with a meek, deferential attitude from New Zealand’s regulators and policymakers. Australia has an imposing body of proposed or passed legislation, including evolved news bargaining legislation, major competition law reform targeting big tech and an incoming social media ban for under 16s. New Zealand, by contrast, has only a stalled digital news bargaining bill, and tech platforms – particularly Meta – are responding by giving Australians far stronger protections than New Zealanders.

Bailey’s counterpart within Labour on consumer affairs is Manurewa MP Arena Williams. She told The Spinoff that “there is no reason why Meta’s standards in Australia couldn’t be used here… I don’t think that’s good enough from Meta.” On Tuesday, during a select committee hearing with the Commerce Commission, she asked its senior leadership a pointed question. 

“There are New Zealand consumers who are seeing paid advertisements on Facebook. Meta are making money from that. Those paid advertisements are intended to steal money from them. Why does the Commerce Commission not take a role to regulate that criminal activity?”

The commission’s deputy chair Anne Callinan picked it up. “We can go after the scammer, but under the current legislation, the platform itself – unless they’re knowingly party to that offence, which is quite a high standard – we wouldn’t have an ability, under the law that we administer, to look at the platform.

“What I would say is that the law at the moment doesn’t give us the tools that we would really like to deal with the problem, and this probably has to be modernised across the board.”

Earlier, Commerce Commission chair John Small pointed to the marked difference between the ACCC, both in funding and in mandate. “They were resourced to pull together anti-scam activity across the whole economy. We have not been asked to do that, or resourced to do that… At the moment, we can do some of it, but we can’t do much of it.” 

In Australia, the ACCC has an ongoing Digital Platform Services Inquiry, similar to the way the Commerce Commission monitors the likes of energy and telecommunications here. Digital platforms, despite their vast scale and involvement in our economy, have no such scrutiny in this country. Small also pointed out that the legal remedies are far more mild here – by comparison, the ACCC could soon be able to fine platforms up to $50m for breaches. “Fines need to sting, they need to not just be a cost of doing business… that’s an area of real interest to us.” 

Labour’s Williams agrees with Small’s contention. “The Commerce Commission should be tooled to confront those problems at both a bank level, and a social media level.” In this she echoed Westpac CEO Catherine McGrath’s contention that scams are a “pipe” – banks are pressured and regulated to attend to their end of it, but Facebook suffers no penalty for all the scams which originate on its platform. Until New Zealand gives the Commerce Commission scope and resources, its leaders say, it cannot be expected to match its Australian counterparts. Until then, according to Williams, Meta will keep running scam ads, regardless of the cost to society – “that’s a part of their business model which shouldn’t exist.” 

Get them all in a room

Bayly’s emphasis all year has been on banks’ role in scams, starting with an open letter he published in February. It was notably specific, talking about confirmation of payee (which will be rolled out next year; banks say it was already in motion) and writing that he was “disappointed” that the banking code of practice had not been updated to more directly address scams. 

This week, he published two further open letters, addressing the places that scams typically originate – telcos (through text-based scams) and platforms (largely through advertising or Facebook Marketplace). Banks, telcos and platforms all play different roles in the scam ecosystem – it’s a cost to banks, a nuisance to telcos, and an advertising revenue stream to platforms. Banks say telcos are doing their part, but Meta in particular is a “zero”, according to Kiwibank CEO Steve Jurkovich.

The open letters are similar in some ways, encouraging parties to work together, and asking for specific actions. However, reimbursement is mentioned 10 times in the letter to banks, but just once in the letter to platforms, and only as something banks were being coaxed to do. By contrast, platforms receive a far more placid message. “I encourage you to take immediate and practical action”, “I am interested in receiving updates” – this in a letter acknowledging that digital platforms are “a key facilitator in transmitting scams”.

As Dylan Reeve pointed out in a story for The Spinoff, repeated attempts to report even the most blatant examples of paid scam advertisements on Facebook almost always end up with no action taken. 

Might that change? Tomorrow, Friday December 6, Bayly will convene a meeting of all the key institutional players in the scam ecosystem – government agencies like the Commerce Commission, GCSB and FMA, along with bank and telco CEOs. They will be joined by a collection of senior regional leaders from big tech companies, an attempt at drawing those entities into an ongoing workstream. These include Mia Garlick, Meta’s policy director; Caroline Rainsford, Google’s country director; Vanessa Sorenson, Microsoft’s global partner solutions director for the region; and Josh Machin, Apple’s Australia country manager. 

A spokesperson for Bayly called the event “a roundtable … to discuss collaboration and how we work together to enhance consumer protections”. It exemplifies the contrast between Australia’s proactive and punitive attitude towards big tech excesses, and New Zealand’s friendly nudging. “If these were New Zealand-domiciled companies we’d have ways of dealing with them,” says Williams. Because they’re not, we largely try to coax them into better behaviour. For now, there remains one rule for New Zealand businesses, and no rules for tech platforms.