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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“Okay, my name is Shenene Hogg and I'm a proud Torres Strait Islander woman. Today, I am here to share my journey as a survivor of domestic violence.”

RUBY:

In 2017, Shenane Hogg woke up from an induced coma. She had been attacked by her partner, after years of abuse.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“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.”

RUBY:

She woke to, not only a traumatic brain injury, but also to tens of thousands of dollars of debt, raised in her name by her abuser.

It took Shenane 18 months to learn to talk again, but more than five years to clear the debt she never should have had.

Last week, Shenane told her story to a parliamentary inquiry looking into financial abuse.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“No one should endure what I went through and I am determined to raise awareness and advocate for change.”

RUBY:

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 17. And a warning this episode discusses domestic violence and suicide.

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RUBY:

Karen, you’ve been spending your time following the inquiry into financial abuse, which is where Shenane Hogg spoke about what happened to her. Tell me what she shared with the inquiry.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“My name is Shenane Hogg and I appear in a lived experience capacity.”

Audio excerpt — Speaker:

“Thank you very much, and we might just get the volume up in the room a little higher if possible.”

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“Sorry bit of a soft talker, bit nervous.”

KAREN:

So, Shenane Hogg is a proud Torres Strait 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.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“My personal experience began with financial exploitation. I found myself footing bills, lending money, losing control of my own finances and even having debts accrued in my name.”

KAREN:

She said that there was this honeymoon period where she knew it was happening, but she was not sure about doing something about it.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“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.”

KAREN:

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.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“During my recovery, I discovered that my abuser had amassed $56,000 of debt in my name.”

KAREN:

There is $16,000 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 an understanding from them that this is not her debt. This is a debt that her partner has imposed upon her.

Audio excerpt — Shenane Hogg:

“If only there had been more awareness and understanding then of the complexities of domestic violence and its impact on financial autonomy.”

KAREN:

You can hear how hard it was for Shenane Hogg. She is still someone who is on a rental blacklist. She is still getting her life together. You know, this is a terrible situation, and she's still living in fear.

RUBY:

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?

KAREN:

Well the entire inquiry, I mean, there are many parliamentary inquiries, but this one in particular, came from a Labor backbencher Zaneta Mascarenhas. She's been hearing about this abuse in her community. It's coming from, I guess, a giant, national conversation we're having about gendered violence. But this year in particular, 2024, 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, died and he's been charged with murder and attempted murder. We had a woman's body who was dumped in a wheelie 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.

RUBY:

And Shenane’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 financial abuse occurs? What kinds of things do people report being done to them?

KAREN:

So there were a lot of harrowing submissions to this inquiry. One that stood out was the case of Molly Wilkes. Molly Wilkes took her own life in 2022 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 $65,000. 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 cases, not even letting them know that they are party to it, so they are being signed on without their knowledge or permission. It could be inheritance impatience, 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 they 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 ripe for reform.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break, what’s stopping the banks from acting?

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RUBY:

Karen, you've been listening to the evidence given 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?

KAREN:

So, we heard from the major banks. They all gave submissions to this inquiry. They are aware that this is a problem. And look, we're also hearing the entirety of this problem and we understand that this is a cost to the Australian community of $5.7 billion to victims and $5.2 billion to the economy every year. So this is a very large problem, but the evidence to the inquiries is that banks and other institutions feel hamstrung when there are cases of abuse. They feel that they can’t act.

Audio excerpt — Speaker:

“I now call for representatives from the National Australia Bank.”

KAREN:

We heard from Jocelyn Turner. She works in executive resolution and remediation with NAB. Her testimony was really quite startling.

Audio excerpt — Jocelyn Turner:

“So if a customer calls us and says, ‘I'm in danger. He's about to hurt me, something is about to happen,’ then we would refer that to the police immediately.”

Audio excerpt — Speaker:

“What about if he's about to hurt me financially?”

Audio excerpt — Jocelyn Turner:

“That is a different challenge because we don't have anywhere to refer it to.”

KAREN:

The National Australia Bank talks about calls that they’re receiving.

Audio excerpt — Jocelyn Turner:

“We are seeing that in the region of about 200 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 60.”

KAREN:

This is just one particular, although major, bank and it gave goosebumps to Labor backbencher Zaneta Mascarenhas.

Audio excerpt — Zaneta Mascarenhas:

“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.”

RUBY:

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?

KAREN:

The evidence to the inquiry is that banks and other institutions feel like they’re blocked by the privacy act.

Audio excerpt — Speaker:

“Will you please state your full names and the capacity in which you appear today?”

Audio excerpt — Lisa Pogonoski:

“Lisa Pogonoski, General Manager of Customer Solutions at the Westpac Group.”

Audio excerpt — Adrian Ahern:

“Adrian Ahern, Customer Advocate, Westpac Group.”

KAREN:

We heard from Westpac one particular case where there was a case of elder abuse.

Audio excerpt — Adrian Ahern:

“Just in the last couple of weeks I have one example of monitoring. So we had a customer who appointed her son her attorney. Over the last couple of weeks, he had transferred $150,000 in three or four payments from his mother's account to his account.”

KAREN:

The bank was aware that this was happening and it did actually, in this case, do something about it.

Audio excerpt — Adrian Ahern:

“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.”

KAREN:

But it said that if it was in a separate bank, it wouldn't have been able to do anything about it because the privacy laws and the separation of the particular banks.

Audio excerpt — Speaker:

“So if he banked with a different bank account, like a different banking organisation, would have that been more problematic to recover that money?”

Audio excerpt — Lisa Pogonoski:

“We actually wouldn't have been able to recover that money because under the privacy legislation, we can't go and contact another institution to find those funds or to recall those funds.”

KAREN:

So, there is a recurring theme from this particular inquiry that the Privacy Act is something ripe 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 law, but that does not mean that police can act on that. When we get down to states and territories, that is where it could potentially be a criminal offence. We have in New South Wales, it recently became a criminal offence and it hasn't had a chance to actually make an impact in the community just yet. It is an offence 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 incredibly complex area, but there is a mood for change.

RUBY:

And Karen, violence against women, it's been characterised 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, this current government is? How high up on the priority list is it?

KAREN:

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 are seeing moves right at the moment to do something about bankruptcy laws, which ties into financial abuse. There is a move to do more in the space of superannuation. There are changes within the social services portfolio. But still the numbers are growing and, you know, we're only halfway through this year and there are 49, 50 women that have died and so many more thousands of women out there who are being terrorised, who are being hospitalised, who are just suffering in silence and we don't know. And it takes really brave people like Shenane Hogg 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’.

RUBY:

Karen, thank you so much for your time.

KAREN:

Thank you.

RUBY:

If you or someone you know is affected by family, domestic or sexual violence – 1800 Respect has a confidential hotline: 1800 737 732.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

A substantial cache of Disney's internal workplace messaging has been leaked online by a hacker group claiming to protect artists' rights.

The group, named Nullbulge, told the media it targeted Disney "due to how it handles artist contracts, its approach to AI, and its pretty blatant disregard for the consumer".

And,

Greens MP Samantha Ratnam says it is “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 Albanese 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 7am. See you tomorrow.

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