Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I'm sure you'll all agree that both the gallery and the community at large quite rightly expect bipartisanship from this place. There is a reform that is capable of bipartisanship right here, right now. It's been on the table for two years. They are reforms to protect those vulnerable consumers who are trapped in a vicious debt spiral as a result of vultures and mercenaries offering payday loans and rent-to-buy schemes in a circumstance where we see repayment obligations spiralling out in a never-ending story, as high as 800 per cent.

We know there are times of need and times of crisis, where the fridge blows up, the washing machine needs to be fixed or a new one needs to be bought. But these reforms strike a sensible middle ground. The government had legislation ready to go through their cabinet in October last year with a promise that it would be delivered in 2017. Guess what? The parliamentary friends of payday lending, the conservative rump of the right wing, have struck, and at the moment, under the new assistant minister and the Treasurer, they are trying to pretend this legislation never existed. That will not do. The Labor Party has introduced the legislation word for word, sentence for sentence, comma for comma. The Liberal Party has the option: do you vote for your own legislation to protect vulnerable consumers or do you walk away? If you won't stare down your backbench, Prime Minister, we will. If you are too scared, we're not.

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