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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 596 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The UCCC is ultimately the appropriate vehicle for such a change. It would keep the equivalents of the Fair Trading Acts of all states and territories in accordance. For some time, there has been a proposal on the table of the UCCC MC to address this issue, and the broad problem of credit card overcommitment.

Members who were part of the fourth Assembly will recognise this bill. Last May Mr Rugendyke put forward a similar bill. That bill was referred to the uniform credit management committee. For reasons I will come back to, they did not agree to its implementation..

Following this advice, the Assembly agreed to the bill, in principle, in the final sitting week. However, most members had decided to adjourn debate, which meant that the bill lapsed. The argument, in short, was that we should wait for the national process. There was a similar, but more extensive, amendment in the works and a draft bill was expected by November last year.

Mr Speaker, you may wonder why the Greens are reviving this bill. Well, the issue has not gone away. As in previous years, in the lead-up to Christmas, the CARE consumer advice line took note of callers with this type of problem. They have case studies of people who were willing to have their experiences recorded.

As I have said, consumer debt is still rising. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for something to come out of the national process. I have asked the Chief Minister for a status update. My office has contacted the New South Wales department responsible for development of the bill. From these inquiries, I understand we are still some way off.

The decision of members to put off the bill last year was based on two things. Firstly, there was fear that passing the bill would breach the code, possibly resulting in the ACT being removed from the committee. Secondly, they felt there was really no need because, in all likelihood, an agreed-to amendment would be ready by November 2001.

At that time, I argued that even if a national scheme were to be prepared by November, we should implement the change in time for Christmas 2001. This was because, sadly, Christmas is a time of debt for many. Therefore, it is a time when credit institutions push extended credit limits to their stressed customers.

We did not have that law in place, and now we do not have a national scheme ready to go. Isn't this too much of a delay? The Greens respect the workings of the UCCC MC and respect the usefulness of uniform codes for what is a national industry. However, this is dragging on for a very long time.

Would this bill breach the UCCC? The then chair of the UCCC MC said that, in his view, the proposed ACT bill is adding to the obligations already imposed, by the code, on credit providers. However, there is a different interpretation of the code which says that it is not adding to the obligations, that it is just ensuring that practices meet existing obligations.

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