Page 1825 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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both sides admitting that there is a problem, but neither of them actually wants to do anything about it in a big hurry—even though they realise that there is a big problem here. Or is it perhaps that they just do not want the Greens to be leading the action to do something? There is often a little bit of that in this Assembly.
I would like to comment on the amendments and on the comments made by the previous speakers. The Attorney-General says that there is action happening at the level of the states and the commonwealth. But of course, as he himself pointed out, while New South Wales may be well advanced in this process—and we apparently are hanging onto their coat-tails—if Tasmania is slow and if the commonwealth is dragging its feet, the whole process is slowed down. I cannot say that I see things occurring at the pace that is probably needed to tackle this problem. Nor can I see why it is going to be a problem for the ACT to take some action, perhaps as an interim measure. I do not feel that that concern was addressed by the Attorney-General or the Liberal Party spokespeople.
By the way, the ACT credit card legislation is cited as best practice. I wonder if some of the delays that Mr Mulcahy was talking about are related to lack of resourcing of the Office of Fair Trading. We must remember that legislation is only as good as the resources to back it up.
Mr Corbell says that he cannot support the motion but that there is a big problem. He said that the ACT Office of Regulatory Services had had only a small number of complaints. However, part of the problem is that consumers need to make those complaints. As ASIC points out in its submission to the Productivity Commission on the inquiry into consumer protection, “consumer protection regulation is justified to protect disadvantaged and vulnerable consumers”. The submission goes on to say:
In our experience, some consumers with low levels of financial literacy are significantly disadvantaged in financial services markets. ANZ’s 2005 survey of adult financial literacy in Australia identified a number of categories of consumers with especially low levels of financial literacy, including:
• consumers with an education level of Year 10 or less
• unemployed consumers and people working in unskilled and casual jobs
• consumers with low levels of savings
• young consumers aged 18–24
• older consumers aged 70 years or more
It continues:
Indigenous consumers and consumers from non-English speaking backgrounds can also be very vulnerable to unscrupulous financial services operators who target them with illegal and inappropriate products and selling practices.
The submission also says:
… economically disadvantaged consumers often buy more expensive, unsuitable products because they have fewer options than other consumers. For example, consumers with very low incomes often experience difficulties obtaining credit through mainstream credit providers and have no option but to deal with fringe credit providers such as payday lenders.
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