Page 1828 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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Dr Foskey’s motion calls on the government to introduce legislation by the end of 2007. The Ministerial Council on Consumer Affairs will meet before the end of this year. As I previously indicated, hopefully it will have resolved the outstanding issues between the states and territories and the commonwealth around justifying the need for a national response and I will be in a position to bring to this Assembly a package which will outline a nationally consistent approach to deal with this issue.
Dr Foskey’s timeframe is the end of 2007. That is what the government anticipates as well. Where we disagree is that we are not going to act unilaterally. We are not going to act unilaterally when we have engaged in good faith with all the other jurisdictions around the country and have agreed that it is desirable that there be a uniform national approach on this matter to stamp out predatory practices by mortgage brokers and finance brokers who act in unconscionable ways. That is the best way of addressing the issue, and that is what we are going to do.
It is not a case of the government rejecting progressive legislation. We have been progressing progressive legislation for the past two years, Dr Foskey. The Ministerial Council on Consumer Affairs and all the Labor states and territories have been progressing this matter for the last two years. That is our commitment to the issue. We are not Johnny-come-latelies to these debates. We have been progressing the matter in a consistent, detailed and consultative manner for a considerable period of time, and we are close to finalisation.
These are the arguments that my amendment seeks to address. It recognises, first of all, that through the Consumer Credit (Administration) Act, there are protections for consumers in terms of credit providers. But the problem is not so much the credit providers as the finance brokers and the mortgage brokers—the people who do not have any risk, the people who do act unconscionably, the people who do sell credit products to people, the people who get their money when they get the people to enter into the finance arrangement and then are gone.
The credit provider, at least, still has to pick up the mess if someone defaults; that costs them time and it costs them money. I am not saying that they are all saints—they are not—but at least they have got some risk. But the mortgage broker, the finance broker, has no risk. Those are the people who we particularly need to ensure are acting conscionably at all times.
The other parts of my amendment are to note that, through the Ministerial Council on Consumer Affairs, the government is working with other state and territory governments to investigate and extend the general principles relating to responsible credit card lending to products such as low doc loans, that that work is ongoing and that it is desirable that there be a national agenda in this regard.
That is our approach. We anticipate that we will have legislation available for debate in this place late this year. The ministerial council normally meets around September or October of each year. Hopefully, by that time outstanding issues will have been resolved by officers across other jurisdictions and with the commonwealth. As I indicated previously, at the last meeting of consumer affairs ministers the sticking point was with the commonwealth’s insistence that they did not believe that a need for
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