Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Riby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 2: Okay. My name is Chanane Hogg, and I'm a proud
Speaker 2: Torres Strait Islander woman. Today I am here to share
Speaker 2: my journey as a survivor of domestic violence.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, Chanae Hog woke up from an induced coma.
Speaker 1: She'd been attacked by her partner after a year's of abuse.
Speaker 2: It is something that affected me deeply. Reflecting on what
Speaker 2: I endured, I consider myself fortunate to have survived, knowing
Speaker 2: that many others, unfortunately have not been as fortunate.
Speaker 1: She woke to not only a traumatic brain injury, but
Speaker 1: also tens of thousands of dollars of debt raised in
Speaker 1: her name by her abuser. It took Chanane eighteen months
Speaker 1: to learn to talk again, but more than five years
Speaker 1: to clear the debt she never should have had. Last week,
Speaker 1: Chanane told her story to a parliamentary inquiry looking into
Speaker 1: financial abuse.
Speaker 2: No one should endure what I went through, and I
Speaker 2: am determined to raise awareness and advocate for change Today.
Speaker 1: Chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Karen Barlow on
Speaker 1: what financial abuse looks like and why the banks say
Speaker 1: they can't stop it. It's Wednesday, July seventeenth, and a warning.
Speaker 1: This episode discusses domestic violence and suicide. Karen, you've been
Speaker 1: spending your time following the inquiry into financial abuse, which
Speaker 1: is where Shanane Hogg spoke about what happened to her.
Speaker 1: Tell me what she shared with the inquiry.
Speaker 2: Yes, my name is Shanine Hog and I appear in
Speaker 2: a lived experience capacity.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, and we might just get the
Speaker 3: volume up in the room a little possible.
Speaker 2: Sorry, a bit of a soft talker.
Speaker 3: Nervous so.
Speaker 4: Chanate Hog is a proud torres Rad Islander and she
Speaker 4: moved to Queensland and she got involved with what turns
Speaker 4: out to be her abuser, and what he had done
Speaker 4: was start to take credit cards out in her name.
Speaker 2: My personal experience began with financial exploitation. I found myself
Speaker 2: footing bills, lending money, losing control of my own finances
Speaker 2: and even having debts occurred in my name.
Speaker 4: She said that there was this honeymoon period where she
Speaker 4: knew it was happening, but she was not sure about
Speaker 4: doing something about it.
Speaker 2: I felt trapped and powerless. Attempts to resist only resulted
Speaker 2: in escalated aggression and abuse despite holding a respectable job.
Speaker 2: I was suffering silently at home.
Speaker 4: A year and a half in. She starts questioning it,
Speaker 4: and there it gets violent and he starts hitting her.
Speaker 4: She ends up with a traumatic brain injury. She goes
Speaker 4: into a coma for nine months.
Speaker 2: During my recovery, I discovered that my abus had amassed
Speaker 2: fifty six thousand dollars of debt in my name.
Speaker 4: There is sixteen thousand dollars worth of accrued interest, and
Speaker 4: these debts are just building up. And it's a while
Speaker 4: before she can even attempt, like years before she can
Speaker 4: even attempt to do something about it. And even then,
Speaker 4: at no point can she get from the banks and
Speaker 4: understanding from them that this is not her debt. This
Speaker 4: is a debt that her partner has imposed upon her.
Speaker 2: If only there had been more awareness and understanding then
Speaker 2: of the complexities of domestic violence and its impact on
Speaker 2: financial autonomy.
Speaker 4: You can hear how hard it was for Shanane Hogg.
Speaker 4: She is still someone who is on a rental black list.
Speaker 4: She still is getting her life together. You know, this
Speaker 4: is a terrible situation, and she's still living in fear.
Speaker 1: And this inquiry it's investigating financial abuse on an individual level,
Speaker 1: but it's also looking at the systemic level, isn't it.
Speaker 1: So it's looking at the way that banks are actually
Speaker 1: allowing or even amplifying this kind of harm. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about how that focus came about?
Speaker 4: Well, the entire inquiry, I mean, there are many parliamentary inquiries,
Speaker 4: but this one, in particular came from a labor backbench
Speaker 4: Zanita Macaranus. She's been hearing about this abuse in her community.
Speaker 4: It's coming from I guess the giant national conversation we're
Speaker 4: having about gendered violence. But this year, in particular, twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four has been a torrid year for women and
Speaker 4: children who have died in cases of domestic and family violence.
Speaker 4: Just in the past week, there was the man charged
Speaker 4: over the fire in Western Sydney where three children, including
Speaker 4: a baby, diet and he's been charged with murder and
Speaker 4: attempted murder. We had a woman's body who was dumped
Speaker 4: in a wheey bin in Melbourne's North and there was
Speaker 4: also a man who stabbed a partner to death. That's
Speaker 4: just one week alone of a horrific year. So this
Speaker 4: is no ordinary parliamentary inquiry. This is an inquiry where
Speaker 4: banks are very firmly being told to listen to the victims.
Speaker 4: It's thousands of women out there in Australia dealing with
Speaker 4: this dark, insidious abuse. Financial abuse is a red flag
Speaker 4: that can often lead to physical harm.
Speaker 1: And Chanange's partner took out credit cards in her name,
Speaker 1: amassing tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me a bit more though, about other ways that
Speaker 1: financial abuse occurs. What kinds of things do people report
Speaker 1: being done to them?
Speaker 4: So there were a lot of harrowing submits to this inquiry.
Speaker 4: One that stood out was the case of Molly Wilkes.
Speaker 4: Molly Wilkes took her own life in twenty twenty two
Speaker 4: in America, where she'd moved with her partner. She had
Speaker 4: been hounded, hounded over a long period by her partner
Speaker 4: and that took its toll to the point where yes,
Speaker 4: she committed suicide. But what had happened was that the
Speaker 4: abuser got hold of her superannuation payout her benefit, which
Speaker 4: was about sixty five thousand dollars. So financial abuse can
Speaker 4: be so many different things. It can be you know,
Speaker 4: partners taking out loans on behalf of their partners and
Speaker 4: perhaps in some case not even letting them know that
Speaker 4: they are a party to it, so they are being
Speaker 4: signed on without their knowledge or permission. It could be
Speaker 4: inheritance in patients where we're talking about power of attorney
Speaker 4: being abused on behalf of older people. It can be
Speaker 4: the abuse of credit cards. It could be bank transfers,
Speaker 4: and there are cases where abuses are sending really small
Speaker 4: amounts of money, less than a dollar, maybe even like
Speaker 4: a couple of cents, and they're sending hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 4: of these transfers. But the abusive aspect to this is
Speaker 4: threats in the naming of that transfer. So there can
Speaker 4: be threats or there can be just abusive messages and
Speaker 4: that goes from one account to the other. There are
Speaker 4: so many sort of loopholes and problems that this parliamentary
Speaker 4: inquiry is trying to address, and it's so rough for reform.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break. What's stopping the banks from acting? Karen,
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the evidence even at this Parliamentary
Speaker 1: Joint Committee looking into financial abuse, and something that is
Speaker 1: very striking about these hearings is not only are we
Speaker 1: hearing from victims, we're hearing from financial institutions, so from banks,
Speaker 1: from the people who work in the teams who deal
Speaker 1: with financial abuse. Can you tell me a bit more
Speaker 1: about the insights that we're getting from these banks.
Speaker 4: So we've heard from the major banks. They all gave
Speaker 4: submissions to this inquiry. They are aware that this is
Speaker 4: a problem and we look we're also hearing the entirety
Speaker 4: of this problem. That we understand that this is a
Speaker 4: cost to the Australian community of five point seven billion
Speaker 4: dollars to victims and five point two billion dollars to
Speaker 4: the economy every year. So this is a very large problem.
Speaker 4: But the evidence to the inquiry is that banks and
Speaker 4: other institutions feel hamstrung when there are cases of abuse.
Speaker 4: They feel that they can't act.
Speaker 1: I now call forward representatives from the National Australia Bank.
Speaker 4: We heard from Joscelyn Turner works in executive resolution and
Speaker 4: remediation with NAB. Her testimony was really quite startling.
Speaker 3: So for customer causes and says I'm in danger, he's
Speaker 3: about to hurt me, something's about to happen, then we
Speaker 3: would refer that to the police immediately.
Speaker 1: What about if is out he's about to hurt me financially.
Speaker 3: That is a different challenge because we don't have anywhere
Speaker 3: to refer it to. And that's one of the things.
Speaker 4: The National Australia Bank talks about calls that they're receiving.
Speaker 3: We're seeing that in the region of about two hundred
Speaker 3: calls a month. But to give you a sense of
Speaker 3: why I'm concerned about that, the same time last year
Speaker 3: it was in the region of sixty.
Speaker 4: This is just one particular although major bank, and it
Speaker 4: gave goosebumps to a labor backbencher, Zenata Macarenus.
Speaker 5: I'm going to.
Speaker 6: Let you know that you've given me goosebumps because one
Speaker 6: of the things that they say about financial abuse is
Speaker 6: that it's an earlier indication of physical violence escalating.
Speaker 1: So banks are reporting that they're seeing a rise in
Speaker 1: financial abuse, but it sounds like they are perhaps overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by what they're seeing. So what do they actually do
Speaker 1: when they get these reports of financial abuse from customers?
Speaker 1: What are their options in terms of responding to abuse
Speaker 1: or preventing it from happening.
Speaker 4: The evidence to the inquiries that banks and other institutions
Speaker 4: feel they're blocked by the Privacy Act, Will.
Speaker 1: You please state your full names the capacity in which
Speaker 1: you appear today.
Speaker 7: Lisa Paganowski, General manager of Customer Solutions at the west
Speaker 7: Tank Group.
Speaker 5: Adrian Ahearn, a customer advocate Westpac Group.
Speaker 4: We heard from Westpac one particular case where there was
Speaker 4: a case of elder abuse.
Speaker 5: Just in the last couple of weeks. I have one
Speaker 5: example of the monitoring. So we had a customer who
Speaker 5: appointed her son her attorney. Over the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 5: he had transferred one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
Speaker 5: three or four payments from his mother's account to his account.
Speaker 4: The bank was aware that this was happening, and it
Speaker 4: did actually in this case do something about it.
Speaker 5: We were able to speak to our customer, his mother.
Speaker 5: She said that he was not entitled to the money,
Speaker 5: so we revoked or suspended his access to his mother's account.
Speaker 5: We took the funds from his account and returned them
Speaker 5: to her account, and then suggested that she take some
Speaker 5: legal advice about revoking her power of attorney.
Speaker 4: But it said that if it was in a separate bank,
Speaker 4: it wouldn't have been able to do anything about it
Speaker 4: because of privacy laws and the separation of the particular banks.
Speaker 6: So if he banked with a different bank account, you like,
Speaker 6: a different banking organization, would have that been more problematic
Speaker 6: to recover that money.
Speaker 7: We actually wouldn't have been able to recover that money
Speaker 7: because under the privacy legislation we can't go on contact
Speaker 7: another institution to find those funds or to recall those funds.
Speaker 4: So there is a recurring theme from this particular inquiry
Speaker 4: that the Privacy Act is something right for potential reform,
Speaker 4: So that is something that is likely. And getting down
Speaker 4: to the core of the matter is that financial abuse
Speaker 4: in most jurisdictions is not a crime. It is acknowledged
Speaker 4: in commonwealth flaw, but that does not mean that police
Speaker 4: can act on that. When we get down to states
Speaker 4: and territories, that's where it could potentially be a criminal offense.
Speaker 4: We have in New South Wales it recently became a
Speaker 4: criminal offense and it hasn't had a chance to actually
Speaker 4: make an impact in the community just yet. It is
Speaker 4: an offense also in Tasmania, but it hasn't also had
Speaker 4: a chance to really do anything. But you know, as
Speaker 4: I've been describing, this is an incredible complex area. But
Speaker 4: you know, there is a mood for change.
Speaker 1: And current violence against women. It's been characterized as an
Speaker 1: urgent issue, as a national crisis by successive governments now,
Speaker 1: yet as we know, it continues to happen and we're
Speaker 1: in a particularly dark moment for it at the moment.
Speaker 1: What sense do you get about how committed to addressing
Speaker 1: this current government is, How high up on the priority
Speaker 1: list is it.
Speaker 4: Well, it says it's very high. It has the ten
Speaker 4: year plan to end violence against women and children within
Speaker 4: a generation, although it is rather ambitious. It has it
Speaker 4: would say, a suite of measures that it is rolling out.
Speaker 4: But we're are seeing moves right at the moment to
Speaker 4: do something about bankruptcy laws, which ties into financial abuse.
Speaker 4: There is a mood to do more in the space
Speaker 4: of superannuation. There is changes within the social services portfolio,
Speaker 4: but still the numbers are growing, and it is you know,
Speaker 4: we're only halfway through this year, and you know there
Speaker 4: are forty nine fifty women that have died, and so
Speaker 4: many more thousands of women out there who are being terrorized,
Speaker 4: who are being hospitalized, who are just suffering in silence,
Speaker 4: and we don't know. And it takes really brave people
Speaker 4: like Shanane Holk to stand up and say this happened
Speaker 4: to me, this is my name, this is my community,
Speaker 4: and we need to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Karen, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Viertad, thank you.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is affected by family,
Speaker 1: domestic or sexual violence, one eight hundred, Respect has a
Speaker 1: confidential hotline one eight hundred seven three seven seven three two.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, a substantial case of Disney's
Speaker 1: internal workplace messaging has been been leaked online by a
Speaker 1: hacker group claiming to protect artist's rights. The group, named
Speaker 1: null Bolge told the media it targeted Disney due to
Speaker 1: how it handles artist contracts, its approach to AI and
Speaker 1: it's pretty blatant disregard for the consumer and Green's MP
Speaker 1: Samantha Ratnam says it's unfair to make any link between
Speaker 1: the attempted assassination of Donald Trump with pro Palestine protests
Speaker 1: in Australia. Ratnam's comments come in response to a statement
Speaker 1: by Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi over the weekend while addressing
Speaker 1: the assassination in a media appearance on Sunday, the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister associated right wing extremist violence in the US with
Speaker 1: protests outside electorate offices in Australia. That's all for today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: See you tomorrow.