House debates

Tuesday, 16 October 2018

Bills

Treasury Laws Amendment (Gift Cards) Bill 2018; Second Reading

6:45 pm

Photo of Madeleine KingMadeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Gift Cards) Bill 2018. I am pleased to address the House in support of a bill which seeks to address unfairness for Australian consumers. This bill seeks to enfranchise gift card recipients who have been adversely affected by a previously disjointed state-by-state approach to Australian gift card regulation.

In Australia, 34 million gift cards or gift vouchers are estimated to be sold each year by national retailers and small businesses, with an estimated value of $2.5 billion. The majority of gift cards sold are for large national businesses, with the Australian Retailers Association—Australia's largest industry association, representing a $310 billion retail sector—estimating its members represent approximately 68 per cent of gift cards and vouchers in the Australian market. One of the commonly used terms and conditions of gift cards are expiry dates, and many consumers' gift cards expire before they get the chance to use them, resulting in financial loss and disappointment for gift card recipients. The current disparity in state and territory legislation means there are no uniform requirements for minimum expiry dates on gift cards, creating complexity for consumers and businesses alike.

Currently, the length of an expiry date on a gift card may vary considerably, depending on the preferences of the trader issuing the gift card, meaning there are no reliable rules of thumb for consumers in determining how long their gift cards may be valid for. Some recipients of gift cards may not know the expiry dates for gift cards they are given, and those consumers may expect their gift cards to last for a reasonable time. Nevertheless, losses from Australian gift card expiry are estimated to be $70 million annually. This bill implements a minimum three-year expiry period for Australian gift cards, improving fairness for consumers and ensuring they have an appropriate period of time to redeem the balance of a gift card, leading to a reduction in breakage. There is no prohibition on a retailer providing a longer expiry period.

In addition, this bill includes increased disclosure requirements, including expiry information prominently displayed on the card to ensure the consumer is aware of the expiry date. This is largely consistent with industry practice, with the majority of gift cards fortunately already displaying this information. This bill will also prohibit gift card suppliers from charging certain post-supply fees which can erode the balance on a gift over time and can operate as a de facto expiry date. This includes charges that are deducted automatically without an explicit communication of the request or demand. This bill also voids existing terms and conditions on cards already in supply if they breach any of the above changes.

The proposed three-year minimum expiry period does not change consumers' rights in the event the supplier of the gift card becomes insolvent or bankrupt. They will continue to be treated as unsecured creditors. Concerns have been raised surrounding the rights of recipients of gift cards for businesses that have since the point of purchase experienced insolvency, and this bill does not address that circumstance. I urge the government in future to consider this consumer protection concern at the upcoming consumer affairs forum of state and territory ministers—if that ever occurs, it having already been delayed since late August.

However, at large and generally, the bill seeks to ensure there is a viable gift card market that meets the needs of consumers. Labor is pleased the government has finally brought forward new legislation in the consumer affairs space. This government, with its sixth minister responsible for consumer affairs in five years, has let Australian consumers down by deferring the national consumer affairs forum scheduled for August, due to its leadership troubles. Though Labor is pleased with the introduction of this bill, it is mind-boggling that it had be approved by circular resolution instead of at the cancelled national COAG consumer affairs forum. That is one reason why I am going to move as part of this debate the following second reading amendment that has been circulated in my name. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes the Government's lack of support for, and failure to protect, Australian consumers; and

(2) calls on the Government to reinvigorate the national Consumer Affairs Forum process, to enable the much-needed reform of Australian Consumer Law".

This is a government far more interested in its own party than Australian consumers. Labor understands the importance of safety and protection for Australian consumers and will continue to work on policies that are in the best interests of Australian consumers.

To be frank, the Assistant Treasurer seems quite disinterested, at best, in the portfolio. The Assistant Treasurer, to be fair, is quite new at the portfolio, but nonetheless he has done next to nothing in the consumer affairs realm, continuing the practice of the five ministers responsible for consumer affairs who came before him. Where was the Assistant Treasurer when news of the honey-laundering scandal broke? And it continues. Recent reports of Australian honey being adulterated with unknown substances have gone pretty much ignored. Last month's Fairfax and ABC investigation found worrying and very concerning evidence of adulteration in imported honey blends, and recently Australian Border Force tests have confirmed the worst: Australian honey may be adulterated as well. The integrity of Australian agriculture and food production itself is in question, and Australian consumers are at risk from this food fraud. However, the Assistant Treasurer is nowhere to be seen on this issue.

Where was the Assistant Treasurer last month when a couple from the United States visiting my home state of WA went to watch the best game in the world, the AFL finals series, and they were refused admission at the gate due to dodgy ticket scamming? This happens time and time again in this country, and this government continues to do nothing. This government's own inquiry of November 2017 into ticket scalping confirmed shady practices by resellers claiming to be authorised sellers, as well as evidence of ticket-buying bot software employed by ticket scalpers to infiltrate ticket-selling systems and artificially inflate prices. However, this government has failed to act.

The Assistant Treasurer is not only loath to respond; the Assistant Treasurer postponed the consumer affairs forum, where recommendations on how best to deal with the scourge of ticket scalping were scheduled to take place. States like Victoria and New South Wales are going it alone, introducing major-event legislation to combat rip-off ticket scalpers, and Western Australia is set to follow soon. Because of government inertia, inconsistent legislation is emerging across the country, making it confusing for consumers and for legitimate ticket sellers for major events in this country.

What is the Assistant Treasurer doing to protect vulnerable Australian consumers who have fallen prey to payday loan rip-off and rent-to-buy schemes? Recent data has shown that there are now 800,000 Australian households who have fallen victim to payday loan sharks. This number has more than doubled in the past decade, including 150,000 new households signing up for payday loans in the last 18 months alone. While the Assistant Treasurer promotes his self-led tours of Israel and surfs the web, Australian families continue to be ripped off every day by the loan sharks in this out-of-control industry.

The government have known about this growing crisis for more than two years, but they are so out of touch that they refuse to do anything about it. It has now been 1,166 days since the government themselves started a review into payday loans and rent-to-buy schemes. Despite repeated promises and supporting the 24 recommendations from the review some 686 days ago, the government are yet to show any action to clamp down on these vicious loan sharks. Following the release of their draft legislation, which sought, nobly, to enact the recommendations of the review, the 'parliamentary friends of payday lenders' right wing rolled Minister O'Dwyer and withdrew the legislation. They then refused to support their own legislation when it was introduced, word for word, as a private member's bill by my colleagues the previous member for Perth and the current member for Oxley. This process has been a complete shambles, and they have utterly abandoned vulnerable Australian consumers who are preyed upon by payday lending sharks.

And where is the Assistant Treasurer right now as Aussie manufacturing jobs are put at risk over confusion over 'Australian made' labelling on Australian complementary medicine products? The complementary health sector generated $4.9 billion in revenue last year, including exports, primarily to Asia, of $320 million. Our complementary health export market is at risk if Australian companies are unable to market their products as 'Australian made' in Asian markets.

The Assistant Treasurer has the power and ability to step up and deliver clarity to the ACCC and to the sector, but again he is nowhere to be seen—out to lunch. But, of course, this is the Assistant Treasurer of the same government, albeit with a different figurehead, that fought for more than 600 days against Labor's calls for a banking royal commission, the government that voted against a banking royal commission 26 times. In fact, it took the banks themselves to get this government behind a royal commission, having to write to the Prime Minister themselves to bring it on.

It took this royal commission to bring the Australian Banking Association to adopt a new banking code of practice for the benefit of consumers. We in Labor, of course, welcome the code as a step in the right direction, with the message getting through to the banks that the community demands and deserves better conduct from the financial institutions they put their trust and their life savings in. But we hear story after harrowing story of Australian consumers falling prey to the greedy and downright unethical banking practices and products, and it beggars belief that the government argued against this royal commission for so long and voted against it so consistently.

Again, this is a government far more interested in their own party and their own mates at the big end of town than ordinary, everyday Australian consumers. Although I have mentioned the Assistant Treasurer, he is not solely to blame for the government's failure to protect Australian consumers; there is a conga line. I've said this before, but allow me to say it again: the Assistant Treasurer, the member for Fadden, is the current minister responsible for consumer affairs and the sixth minister in five years of the Liberal-National government.

So who are the other stars of the Liberal-National cacophony of consumer affairs ministers? In 2015, our current Treasurer, the member for Kooyong, had custody of the consumer affairs portfolio. As we know, he then went on to do very measured and appropriate things in the environment space—and kudos to him for his commitment to the Great Barrier Reef; I'm a keen snorkeler myself, so I somewhat appreciate his misguided efforts. And, of course, he sculpted the National Energy Guarantee. Though he never did get that off the ground, I do commend the member for Kooyong's efforts. Well, I guess he kind of did get the NEG off the ground, having got it through the party room twice, but that's not quite good enough for the Liberal Party—such a shambles it even cost Prime Minister Turnbull his job, didn't it. How did that happen? It took this government tearing itself apart for the member for Kooyong to receive yet another promotion, to the position of Treasurer, and good luck to him. He can wave consumer affairs goodbye.

Of course, we had the Minister for Jobs, Industrial Relations and Women, the member for Higgins, oversee the consumer affairs portfolio. To her credit, had she not been strongarmed by the right-wing bullies in her own party, perhaps she could have achieved some greater policy wins for Australian consumers. The minister actually released the much-needed report of the government's review into small-amount credit contracts, and she did say at the time:

… the panel found that refinements to the law are needed to improve consumer outcomes and that, the current regulatory framework for consumer leases of household goods is not effective in promoting financial inclusion.

So, had she a little bit more power and some more influence in her party room—and perhaps if there were more reasonable heads there—perhaps the hundreds of thousands of Australians who have since fallen victim to the scourge of payday loan sharks would have had more of a chance to make financial decisions that were actually in their own interests. But, alas, as the tired political melodrama of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government played out, she was moved sideways out of the portfolio before she got the chance.

Then our current Deputy Prime Minister had a crack at consumer affairs. If you believe the media, he won't be our Deputy Prime Minister for much longer, but let's not go into that. Our esteemed Deputy Prime Minister, in his capacity as Minister for Small Business, took over the guardianship of the consumer affairs portfolio and said of the much-needed small-amount credit contract reforms to protect Australian consumers at the time that 'things are moving on this front'. That was 18 months ago, and have things moved? No, there's no reform for small-amount credit contracts. It hasn't moved at all. It's glacial progress at best and backwards downhill fast at worst.

And who could forget the contributions of the member for Deakin? It is understandable if you did, of course! Other than campaigning at anti-marriage-equality rallies and running the numbers for the hard right during the leadership crisis, it's hard to identify what the member for Deakin actually proposed, let alone achieved, in the consumer affairs space. Well, I guess he did achieve something for the payday loan sharks, of course: ensuring that the legislation got absolutely nowhere.

Now, of course, we have our current Assistant Treasurer, who is making waves among the constituency for all the wrong reasons. The Assistant Treasurer just a few days ago was forced to pay back to the taxpayer a whopping $38,000 internet bill. This Assistant Treasurer and his government are all very happy with themselves, but they don't give a damn about protecting vulnerable Australian consumers. While families are struggling to make ends meet and being lured into dodgy repayments, further entrenching them in debt, the Assistant Treasurer seems blindly and blissfully unaware of the reasonable cost of Netflix and chilling.

But it is good that the Liberal-National government has been reminded of the dreadful rollout of the NBN through the Assistant Treasurer's outrageous internet bills. Maybe the good people of the Gold Coast will now get their NBN more quickly than expected. This rabble sometimes feels like an episode of the House of Cards and not the good House of Cardsthe British one or the early part of the American series—but more like the House of Cards from the fifth season, where the quality goes exponentially downhill, the characters get increasingly more shallow and desperate to maintain any semblance of relevance, and the executive eventually fire the headline act. We've seen that before, haven't we, member for Goldstein? This show—some would call it a muppet show; the Prime Minister himself calls it that—to be frank, is more of a Greek tragedy. As entertaining as it may be at times to some, it has nothing less than a detrimental effect on the lives of everyday Australians as this government fails to act in the consumer affairs portfolio and to protect vulnerable Australians.

This insular, entitled soap opera of a government has failed Australian consumers utterly. I am proud to be part of a united Labor team and look forward to the valuable contribution to the protection of Australian consumers that a Shorten Labor government will deliver for Australian consumers. We will protect vulnerable Australian consumers where this government has failed to do anything in their interests.

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