Webb Duncan; Doocey MattHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): My question might appear a little bit technical and think it's an overarching question—it's about the nature of the transaction that's going on. I understand the bill permits this contractual arrangement of interest payments to be entered into. I'm aware that back in 2003 the student loan scheme ran into this problem and more recently local bodies ran into the problem of charging interest in an entirely well-meaning manner because they wanted to assist people. The local bodies have been charging interest for home heating renovations often at low or no interest. But the fact of the matter is that if an entity Crown entity or not charges interest we've got a credit contract. Then all of a sudden you are a provider of credits. Local bodies stopped advancing money to homeowners because they realised they had to comply with the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act the Financial Markets Conduct Act and all of the secondary legislation around the provision of credit. If the Minister for ACC would like it the relevant provision in the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act is section 15(1)(ca) which actually explicitly carves out student loans from that. In terms of local body advances for home improvements that are then repaid by an additional amount of rate—although it's not actually a rate; they call it a rate but it's not it's a loan repayment—the exemption is found in secondary legislation under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Financing Act.Now I put it to the Minister that ACC is in a bit of a conundrum here because either it's going to have to meet the obligations of a lender or it's going to have to work through this problem perhaps by exemption or some other way. But if this bill comes into force without an exemption in place it's solved one problem but created another. In fact at the moment it's got a problem because it has been charging interest—it's been lending money on interest. This is why our power bills have a discount for early payment: because it's not strictly interest. They can't say We'll charge you 10 percent more if you're late" because that makes them a lender or an advancer of credit under section 9—I think it is—of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. So if ACC says "You owe us this money: $7000. But you don't have to pay it on the due date you can pay it in 10-months' time at 2.75 percent interest." they are a provider of credit. That's actually a real problem because we don't want to have our ACC officers case managers or whatever they are subject to the Financial Markets Conduct Act and all of those other things. I hope they don't have to do the affordability testing and so on.So look it's a real question because local bodies got absolutely caught out by this. Now it may be that your advisors have thought about that carefully but this should not pass the House if it's going to stop one problem and create another.Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for ACC): Thank you Madam Chair. I think the Hon Duncan Webb did raise some good points. I've been advised by officials that in fact no credit is being offered. It is just delaying payments and paying for that ability."