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Here in New Zealand, most of the time when I get scallops they have the orange egg-sac bit still attached.

Is that not the case in Aus?

Sometimes the anonymous white discs will have a bit sliced almost off and coloured with orange food dye. Often not.

You'll see genuine (imported) scallops at markets occasionally, but it's years and years since I saw a restaurant serve the real thing.

Skate wing is legitimately tasty. It definitely has a shellfish taste to it, so I can see how you could fool someone into thinking it was a scallop.

In the UK, most scampi (a crustacean) is actually monkfish tail.

Australian. Citation please?

See for yourself - like toomanybeersies says, they should have an orange roe (boys and girls both have them - scallops switch sex as required), attached by some stringy material.

The roe has a flavour and texture different to the white meat of the scallop, which is the muscle used to open and close the shell.

The white meat should have a firm and homogeneous texture - fakes tend to have textured lines through them, but not always.