Australia and Thailand signed a joint statement on transnational crime in Canberra on Wednesday, committing their police, customs, immigration and financial intelligence agencies to closer operational work against online scam operations. Anthony Albanese and Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul signed it in duplicate, in English.
The document records grave concern at the growing sophistication and proliferation of online scam operations, including the use of emerging technologies to facilitate cybercrime, financial fraud, money laundering and trafficking in persons. It commits both governments to disrupting the criminal networks, financial flows and supply chains behind cyber-enabled fraud and the trafficking of narcotics and illicit tobacco. It sets no target, names no dollar figure and commits no funding.
The mechanisms it names already exist. The statement welcomes Australian support for the Anti Cyber Scam Centre under the Royal Thai Police's Police Cyber Taskforce, supported by the Australian Federal Police's Operation Firestorm, and reaffirms Taskforce Storm, established between the AFP and Thai agencies in 2016. It also reaffirms the ASEAN Border Management Cooperation Roadmap, the Bali Process, the Mekong-Australia Partnership on Transnational Crime and the Thailand-Australia Security Dialogue. On the results so far it says only that the work has contributed to a significant number of arrests and the disruption of a substantial number of scam centres across Southeast Asia.
What is at stake for Australians is measured elsewhere. The National Anti-Scam Centre's report on 2025 data recorded 481,523 scam reports across Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, IDCARE and ASIC. Of those, 274,577 involved a financial loss, and the losses totalled $2.18 billion, up 7.8 per cent on 2024 and 29.7 per cent below the 2022 peak of $3.1 billion.
Albanese put the case in terms of capability rather than sentiment. "As transnational crime becomes more sophisticated, it has never been more important that we look to trusted regional partners to help combat crime, protect our communities and advance a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific region," he said.
The visit produced three documents, and the other two show what else moved. A second joint statement commits both countries to expanding trade and investment in agriculture and food, clean energy, critical technologies and the digital economy. Australia affirmed its support for Thailand joining the OECD and its intention to work with Bangkok at COP31, the World Trade Organisation and ASEAN. The two governments agreed to establish a biennial defence ministers' meeting, and to work more closely on science and research, building on existing CSIRO collaboration in pharmaceutical manufacturing and food and agricultural systems.
Albanese said two-way trade has nearly tripled since the free trade agreement entered into force. Neither government released a figure for the value of that trade in the material published on Wednesday.
The compounds themselves run on trafficked labour, and the statement addresses that through existing programs: the ASEAN-Australia Counter Trafficking Program, Thailand's Countering Trafficking in Persons Centre of Excellence and the Royal Thai Police's Anti-Trafficking in Persons Centre. It does not say how many people are currently held in scam operations in the region, and neither government has published an estimate.
Nothing in the statement takes legal effect. It records what the agencies will do and which existing frameworks they will use, and it commits no money on either side. The commitments made in the same visit that carry a schedule are the trade and defence ones. Next year is the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
