Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Chilling fact: in July alone, over 300,000 young people took out a consumer lease or payday loan. This is a form of lending with few or no guardrails, exorbitant interest rates and outrageous repayment terms. The Treasurer and his predecessors have sat on reforms of this system of lending for over a thousand days. How they cannot be ashamed of that escapes me. This is the Treasurer who today lectures us about what we should do to support young Australians. What about protecting those same young Australians from loan sharks?

In a meeting with the Consumer Action Law Centre recently—it was a distressing and very tough meeting—I heard from two distraught parents who lost their son after he got trapped in a debt cycle trying to repay four loans. For too long, we have seen payday lenders exploiting those who can least afford their finance. There is no place for predatory lending. We should have credit products that are safe and reasonable, but this is a government that protects not young Australians but the loan sharks that prey upon them. Worse still, on top of this, when you don't protect casual workers, when you cut JobKeeper early, when you make people raid their superannuation, when you limit options for financial support, you are actually driving desperate people to predatory payday lenders that are preying upon them. This is wrong. Enough is enough. End predatory payday lending now.

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