Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thought there might be a Liberal member willing to speak on this motion, but, no!

I want to start by thanking the Independent member for Indi for bringing forward her motion on payday lending and small amount credit contracts. I would like to acknowledge the good work she is doing in her community to help the vulnerable who fall prey to such outrageous practices in the community. Today I stand here somewhat ashamed that our national government has turned its back on the most vulnerable members of our community. It is now 1,102 days since the government pledged to review the small amount credit contract laws. It is 622 days since the government itself accepted the recommendations of the review, and last year they even went so far as to draft, prepare and release legislation that addressed the dreadful practices in payday lending in this country.

Since then, what has the government done? The Liberal-National government has done nothing to protect vulnerable Australians from payday loan sharks and unscrupulous rent-to-buy operators. Only a few days ago, my local newspaper screamed a headline that one of the suburbs in my electorate, Baldivis, had the highest number of personal bankruptcies in Australia for a second successive year. It's a dreadful thing that's happening to people across the country, but particularly, of course, it means a lot for me and my people in Baldivis. It is just more evidence of people doing it tough in this country. Many of the people in Baldivis have been caught by the resources downturn and left to their own means. There are thousands in WA and all over the country accessing short-term loans just to make ends meet.

Earlier this year, we heard the report that 1.8 million households are now financially distressed and that over 650,000 families have turned to payday loans just to get by. We heard of a mother of two young children with a weekly income of $488 being signed up to contracts for whitegoods worth $1,600, with a total repayment of a whopping $5,824. We also heard stories of an elderly gentleman on a disability support pension of $456 per week duped into a contract for $2,041 on a consumer lease, with repayments going to a grand total of nearly $8,000. It's an outrage!

And it's not as if both sides of the House are unaware of the problem of payday lending sharks or the appropriate response to it. The Turnbull government baulked on the independent review of the small amount credit contract laws. It reported in March 2016. They accepted the recommendations, they drafted the legislation and government ministers supported the need for this legislation. So what's gone wrong and why won't the government act? It appears that the hard Right of the Liberal and National parties rolled the assistant minister instead of rolling over the payday loan sharks in this country. The 'parliamentary friends of payday lenders' came out strong and showed the nation just who runs the country, and I can tell you that it's not the Prime Minister.

The Turnbull government's 1,100-day-plus disregard for the out-of-control payday loan industry is contemptible. In the meantime, while they dilly-dally and do absolutely nothing, households are forced into payday loans and face skyrocketing fees and interest rates as high as 884 per cent. The Liberals have a disgraceful record in helping consumers who are being taken advantage of by payday loan sharks.

A review commissioned by the Australian Consumer Law Centre found that the number of Australian households with a payday loan has almost doubled in the last 10 years, to 650,000 people. The report also found that the average number of loans per borrower had jumped 45 per cent in the past five years, to 3.64 loans per borrower, and 40 per cent of borrowers have more than one loan. So instead of waiting around for the government to act, on 26 February this year, federal Labor took action—where the government would not—and introduced legislation in the form of a private member's bill to reform payday lending and rent-to-buy laws after it became clear the government was just going to walk away from this problem.

I want to acknowledge here, in particular, the extraordinary efforts of the member for Oxley, Milton Dick, in bringing forward the private member's bill, along with the former member for Perth. The member for Oxley has not rested in his fight against unscrupulous payday lenders and dodgy rent-to-buy businesses that prey upon the vulnerable in this country.

The bill was debated in this chamber on 26 March. However, the Turnbull government and its members again demonstrated their contempt when not even a single Liberal or National MP bothered to turn up to debate the bill in the chamber. This bill is a word-for-word copy of the government's own exposure draft of legislation to reform payday loans and rent-to-buy schemes. which they released last year. Yes, we re-released the government's legislation—and they failed to support the very bill they had produced themselves. So I call upon the Liberals to get their act together, do the right thing by consumers who've been ripped off in this country and reintroduce the legislation.

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