Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Urban Development and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I recently met the Australian Financial Counselling and Credit Reform Association, AFFCRA. Its key objectives are to advocate on behalf of its members and to lobby for reform of credit and bankruptcy laws. Lately AFFCRA has also played a key role in raising professional standards of the industry by lobbying for a national accreditation scheme for financial counsellors, better data collection, training and professional development.

My appreciation of their efforts to help disadvantaged clients has been reinforced. Whilst I have been generally aware of the role of counsellors, a particularly poignant local case has driven this home more clearly. A constituent is about to lose her home due to her inability to comprehend the complexity of the financial products that she has signed up to over two decades. She initially purchased a home for $78,000 in 1987. Today she owes lenders a total of $470,000. The woman is a single parent with little prospect of finding employment that will come even close to meeting a fraction of her loan repayments. Her debts began to pile up after the breakdown of her marriage and subsequent numerous attempts to refinance.

Her tale indicates poor comprehension of debt matters and even poorer lending practices by numerous institutions that were only too happy to lend to her at inflated interest rates. My constituent and her son will be evicted from her house in a matter of days. I refer to this matter as I believe that if she had access to appropriate financial counselling many of her problems would simply not exist. Sadly, in all her years of poor financial management she simply never came across an independent financial counsellor nor had she ever been referred to one.

In November 2005 the ANZ publication ‘Understanding Personal Debt and Financial Difficulty in Australia’ reported on a qualitative survey of consumers who had self-identified as being in financial hardship. The resulting report noted:

For people who saw a financial counsellor, it was unanimously a positive empowering experience for them, albeit at a negative point in their life. In addition, the majority stated it had changed the way they viewed their finances and changed their financial behaviours.

The current sad state of affairs comes after more than a decade of defunding of financial counselling services by the Howard government. Ironically whilst the Howard government has been totally missing in action over issues of consumer protection, the out-of-control personal debt crisis has meant that there has never been a more urgent need for more qualified financial counsellors.

Recent press reports in Sydney note that suburbs with a very high mortgage foreclosure rate are amongst the 10 or so cited in my electorate, so it is a very big local issue. The importance of financial counselling was best summed up in a paper delivered by David Tennant. He said:

Despite the existence of well intentioned credit laws and efforts to educate people in relation to good lending and borrowing practices, it is inevitable that people will encounter financial difficulty through no fault of their own. In such circumstances, financial counselling intervention can be effective in assisting people to respond positively to their immediate financial problem and to help them positively plan and manage their financial affairs into the medium and longer term.

Financial counselling Australian-style, with the clients’ needs as the central, obvious focus, is in marked contrast to the models employed in North America and the UK. There the counselling is tied to repayment of debts. Indeed, in North America, credit counsellors not only facilitate the construction of debt repayment agreements, but are resourced directly from the funds collected from consumer debtors. Consumer debtors actually pay for counselling which is often at five minutes to midnight and not in their interests. To this end, I refer to a recent Victorian Government report:

A free financial counselling service funded by government … arguably ensures independence and more appropriate advice. Further, through funding arrangements, government can enhance and monitor the standard of service being provided.

The public interest is clearly served by maintaining, enhancing and strengthening the current system. Unfortunately, the opposite appears to be the case. We are slowly heading down the American path of user-pays. Government intervention is overdue to stop this trend. In conclusion, I note that AFCCRA are playing a key role in making sure that policy makers are hearing this.

I now turn to events on the weekend in the electorate adjacent to mine, the electorate of Parramatta. There a ceremony was held to mark Sorry Day 2007. I note that two events were held: one was the customary weekend event at this time of year, and there I was very moved by the contribution of Cleonie Quayle, a local resident who cited two stories from the stolen generation report. The first story concerned the seizure of grandchildren from an obviously elderly Australian and recounted his situation, dying of malnutrition, bedsores and grieving because he had been deprived of his immediate family. The other story she recounted was of a woman’s aunt whose children were taken from her. Those children fell victim to sexual abuse and eventually rape. I think the examples she gave were very telling. She said that the girl in the stolen generation report talked of having no-one to speak to about it, no family to discuss these matters with, and no-one to give her any empathy and feeling, because she had no connection with her family when she was raped in these institutions.

I note that Parramatta council was, I think, the first council in Sydney to declare itself, over a decade ago, as in accord with declarations of being sorry for these events. I note the activity of local Aboriginals—Doug Desjardines, Marcia Donovan and Bruce Gale. I note the activity of Councillor Phil Russo, who, of course, is not of Aboriginal extraction but has been active on the consultation committee. David Williams is not on that consultation committee but he has recently had notoriety in Sydney for talking about the condition of black servicemen in the wars and the way in which their history—and, more particularly, discrimination against them—has not really been articulated. Coincidentally, today, the Sydney Morning Herald spoke of the Lovett family and of their not being granted land as ex-servicemen like any other Australian servicemen.

It was interesting at the ceremony. I started talking to a bloke in the mob at the function, Mr N.G. Bull, an Anglo-Saxon Australian, quite advanced in age. He had grown up in the area. I started talking to him there and—this is probably a part of why he was there—he recounted two experiences of his in Australia with regard to Aboriginal people. He recounted that, in one country town where he was at the time, the Australian singer Jimmy Little, who was on tour there—who, just by coincidence, from my recollection, also comes from Granville in my electorate—had his bags thrown out of a hotel. He also told me—as I say, unsolicited—another experience of his own. He often travelled Australia and he once gave a lift in his car to an Aboriginal in Queensland in the late sixties. As they came to this country town in Queensland, the Aboriginal bloke offered him some money for a meal for giving him the lift. And Mr Bull asked him, ‘Why are you giving me the money? Why don’t you just come inside?’ He replied, ‘I won’t be able to go into a cafe to eat. That is just money as thanks to you.’

Also that day there was a second ceremony, which is not an annual event. That was at Lake Parramatta where a memorial was put up to commemorate the fact that 10 years ago Parramatta was, as I understand it, the first council in Sydney to associate itself with a Sorry Day campaign. A memorial was put up there notifying people of that history. A tree planting was undertaken by Cleonie Quayle and Linda McDonald, who are also part of the local consultation committee.

I note these events where Parramatta has been a forerunner. Ironically, the adjacent Auburn Council was the last council in Sydney to fly the Aboriginal flag. It is quite ironic that they are next door to each other. But, in the interim, Auburn has made up for a lot of lost time and certainly has major activities around these events.

Finally, the other council in my electorate, Holroyd, runs a very big NAIDOC week every year. It is quite a big event and attracts people from surrounding suburbs. Whilst the whole council has been unified around this and has been especially active, I would have to say that Councillor Malcolm Tulloch has had a particular interest in Aboriginal affairs and has driven this matter home.

I guess there is more interest in this in our region because, up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this area was still semirural. In the late 19th century the major industries in the Granville-Guildford area were charcoal and timber-getting. And, in a local history which came to light from the state library—where it had been in their archives, unlooked-at for 100 years or so—a local shopkeeper recounted seeing the last dwindling Aboriginals drifting down Parramatta Road or, as it was then called, Sydney Road, and expressed the remorse of local residents at the declining condition of Aboriginal Australians at the beginning of the 20th century.