Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

That is very wrong. This is what our financial counsellors around this country, those people working at the coalface, helping out people in financial distress, see every day. Rental companies are being bankrolled by the government through exorbitant fees and charges paid out directly through Centrepay. It's a disgrace and it needs to be stopped.

Some small amount credit contract providers will waive fees and create a special payment scheme for people in extreme circumstances, with companies such as Good Shepherd Microfinance trying to help out people in budget distress. What we need is robust consumer protections. However, this Morrison government just sits by and does nothing, just like the two governments before it, led by Prime Ministers Abbott and Turnbull. Vulnerable Australian families are continuing to be ripped off every day by the loan sharks in this out-of-control industry. Reforms such as this are vital to protect Australian consumers, yet the government have done nothing on this. Well, actually, they started doing things on this and then they more than crabwalked away; they ran away at high speed.

Labor have introduced a private member's bill which replicates the bill brought to this parliament in draft form by Minister O'Dwyer. The member for Indi introduced a similar private member's bill this week. The government could have supported our private member's bill, it could have brought on its own legislation or it could have supported the member for Indi's legislation. We know the member for Oxley has been conducting community roundtables on this issue. My colleague Senator McAllister, alongside the shadow minister for financial services, Clare O'Neil, and I have announced an inquiry to examine financial services that were excluded from the terms of reference of the royal commission. That Senate inquiry will look at things that include payday lending rorts.

It seems that everyone in this place is willing to govern and to progress reform to protect the vulnerable consumers of this country except the government itself. This is a government far more interested in its own party than Australian consumers. The Assistant Treasurer, gift cards aside, has done next to nothing for Australian consumers except to ensure that payday reform in this country does not happen. We know he's been very busy doing the numbers in the previous challenges for the leadership of the Liberal Party. It's unsurprising, though, considering his personal stake in the loan rip-off scheme. The Assistant Treasurer was part of the irate backbencher revolt when Minister O'Dwyer had guardianship of the payday reforms. Who could forget that role of 'parliamentary friends of payday lending'? It was yet another example of the chaos and dysfunction of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. It's such a shambles they have small groups of backbenchers rolling decisions of cabinet. What a way to run a country! It's a disgrace.

As I said at the start, it's been 1,173 days since this government began the process of reform, and now we hear the Assistant Treasurer is going to wait for the outcome of the royal commission to do anything. That will take us to about 1 February, and that's only when you start thinking about the response to the royal commission. All this government is doing is ensuring it will do nothing to reform payday lending. It's doing nothing. By the Assistant Treasurer's own time line, he will not respond, he will not produce any reform to payday lending, he will not bring in the legislation his own government produced two years ago. He just puts it off to the never-never. What we do know, what Australians can be assured of, is that the Liberal government will never ever reform payday lending. They will never work to protect Australian consumers from payday loan sharks. It's a crying shame and they should just quit.

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