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