Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke optimistically refers to the “human firewall” that can form part of the defence against cybersecurity breaches. He was nearly caught outside the wall by someone purporting to be from Amazon customer service. That was until he belatedly realised that reading out the number in the text message he’d been sent would not end well.

But he warns any current limits on the number of such scams due to human capacity constraints are about to be wiped out by artificial intelligence.