Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Financial Services. How is the government protecting consumers, without stifling innovation, in the buy-now pay-later industry?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Blair for his question. There is not a harder-working or more decent member of parliament in this place. I want to acknowledge his long, hardworking commitment, as a lawyer and as a member of parliament, to providing rights and dignity for Australian people.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left will cease interjecting.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He asks about buy-now pay-later. Buy-now pay-later credit products have been providing enormous innovation and competition in our credit markets. Over the last 12 months you would have seen a massive increase in the number of buy-now pay-later accounts—seven million accounts in Australia as of today, about $16 billion worth of payments flowing through the buy-now pay-later sector. Most Australians, if they walk into a shop today, can see on the counter that you can pay for a product by cash, by Visa card or by MasterCard, and you'll also see a sign saying Zip pay, Afterpay or a number of other buy-now pay-later products.

And therein lies the issue. Some of those products are regulated as credit products under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, and some of them are not. Some of them have rights for consumers; some of them do not. We take the view that if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck then it's probably a duck—and buy-now pay-later is looking pretty ducky. We want to ensure that we can continue to have innovation and competition in the credit market, but we also want to ensure that credit and credit users and consumers are well protected. We will ensure that we have the right sort of consumer protections in place. That's why this week we have released a consultation paper inviting feedback from stakeholders to look at how we can better regulate buy-now pay-later products in Australia. We're concerned about ensuring that the products are properly marketed to consumers, concerned to ensure that we aren't encouraging unaffordable lending practices, concerned to ensure that we have the appropriate levels of credit checks in place. We will receive consultation input from the market, from consumers and from stakeholders by December this year, with a view to ensuring that we can have regulation in place at some stage next year.

Of course, it is not just in buy-now pay-later. There are many members in this place—including yourself, Mr Speaker—who have put a lot of effort into ensuring that we can have appropriate regulation for payday lending. We have laws before this parliament to ensure that we can regulate those areas of credit to ensure proper protection for consumers. (Time expired)