Page 1053 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 1990
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has been any rise in the role of the Greiner Government in this area. I feel that we can get uniform legislation through. There is a deal of temporising required. Current problems relate, if I could put that diplomatically, to an approach by the Victorian Government. It may well be that its approach is the right one. But be that as it may, there are difficulties in securing final passage of a draft Bill within the working parties at the moment.
Returning to the Credit (Amendment) Bill that is before the house, I point out that the need for the amendments to the Credit Act were recognised through consultation with and cooperation between industry and government. Although it had an extremely long gestation period, this Bill does present an example of government and industry successfully working together to tackle a problem. It would be fair of me to say that that problem arose both in industry and in government and related to the registration of credit providers in a way which was not consistent with the Act and which resulted in some possible invalidity or voidness about the nature of the registration. What we are doing, in effect, as the Leader of the Opposition said, is retrospectively validating those registrations of credit unions in the ACT.
Mr Speaker, the credit union movement itself fulfils a growing and important role in providing savings and lending services on an accessible and equitable basis. Of course, it is the ordinary consumers who make up the membership of credit unions. For this reason also the Government should move to protect those credit unions which are, at this stage - and, hopefully, not for many more minutes - vulnerable in a situation where credit agreements covering sums of money which may total more than $100m are potentially and possibly voidable by the borrowers.
In the absence of any fraud or misrepresentation by the credit providers, those voiding actions would, of course, be immoral in themselves. Fortunately, we now have the Bill before the house and I am in a position to further explain to the house the need to correct the situation retrospectively so that persons who might be minded to get out of their borrowing responsibilities to the lenders cannot do so. A number of those lenders are departmental-type credit unions. They are not fly-by-night operators; they are entirely proper credit unions registered in the ACT and elsewhere. Now that I am in a position to indicate to the Assembly that a sum of great magnitude is at risk, as are, potentially, some of the societies involved, it is necessary that we move decisively now - in this sitting - to pass this Bill.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
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