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

'Once more with feeling', as they say in the classics. I tell you what, it is the blind leading the blind over that side when it comes to reforms to the small amount credit contracts. These are more commonly known as payday loans or rent-to-buy schemes. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians are being ripped off as a result of a lack of action on behalf of that side over there. What do we hear? In a circumstance where we have bipartisan support to get these things fixed, where we saw draft legislation with bipartisan support, we hear that scurrying, scuttling sound. It sounds to me very much like a crab walk.

They reckon that we get organisers coming from the trade union movement. I hear from over the other side the slow but sure sounds of an organisation starting called 'Parliamentary friends of payday lenders'. I just hope that the litany of parliamentary friends does not include those who I see opposite. I'm sure it wouldn't, because these are otherwise upstanding individuals. There is the member Tangney and the member for Wright, but I'm not sure about the member for Berowra or the member for Fisher.

The parliamentary friends of payday lenders are on the march. They are determined to make sure that vulnerable Australians are not protected. They are determined to make sure that people are being left behind. What could they do with the stroke of a pen? What could they do right now? They could introduce the legislation that the consumer action legal group have said is okay to protect Australians today. But they are doing nothing.