Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very grateful to second the National Consumer Credit Protection Amendment (Small Amount Credit Contract and Consumer Lease Reforms) Bill 2020. I can't think of a bill that has been presented to the parliament more than this bill. The government talked about it. Labor have presented their private member's bill. It's been presented in the Senate. I have presented it. I think the former member for Indi actually presented a bill, and now it's the member for Clark.

We are letting Australians down when we don't act with respect to predatory payday lending. I actually want to touch on something that is related to payday lending, and that is Afterpay. Afterpay is a tsunami waiting to happen. We had a 90 per cent increase in use in the last year. We had one in five consumers using Afterpay receiving late fees, and, when they need to take out a loan to pay those late fees, where do they go? They go to get a small loan credit contract, and then they pay up to a 200 per cent increase. We're talking about $43 million in late fees with respect to Afterpay. We need to do work in this place with respect to Afterpay and with respect to payday lending. We are doing the greatest of disservice to Australians by not acting. The fact is that this is the government's own legislation and for many years now frustrated members of parliament have taken the government's own work into this place and said, 'C'mon, let's work on this; let's do this together,' yet we don't even have enough members in the chamber here to make quorum. It's a shame. We need to do better in this place on this very important work. I urge the government to actually make it happen.

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