Logie Jan: Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 27 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18367. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): Talofa lava Mr Assistant Speaker. It is with pleasure that I rise to take a call on these the third readings ofthe Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill and the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill which the Green Party is also pleased to be supporting. We recognise and share the concern at how long it has taken for this legislation to get to the House. We notice that the review of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act commenced in 2008 and that this legislation has had an incredibly long gestation. While we have been waiting and the Government has been moving ever so slowly people have been getting trapped into debt and further entrenched into poverty. As we know these delays have caused real harm. So it is a pleasure to at least have this in front of us tonight to be able to pass it and to move into that next stage of ensuring some protection for New Zealanders.I do need to speak to some of the reasons why we have to have this legislation and what drives people to need to borrow money. Those drivers are things that we believe should be addressed. It is not enough just to restrict ourselves to this kind of secondary measure of preventing the worst of the harm after people have been driven into poverty.We have a duty in this country I believe and the Green Party believes to actually eliminate poverty. We have enough wealth in this country to be able to distribute it in a way that we do not have poverty.I just really want to say that we have heard this evening some people talking about people being caught in these terrible contracts because of a lack of literacy or a lack of financial literacy. Also it is really important to actually just put on record that desperation I believe is probably the main driver for people getting into these agreements. Say you have got the opportunity for a job but it requires a car and you do not have one and you want to get yourself and your family out of poverty. If you do not have access to that cash then the only way you are going to enable that to happen—previously—is to get into this kind of arrangement. The people who have preyed on that desperation are worthy of our contempt not just our regulation.In front of the Commerce Committee some contracts from a company were shown that were from door-to-door sales. I do want to point out as well that I live in one of those communities that is targeted by these people. I have been a renter in Wellington for many years and moved around between communities where that has not been the case. I have never before moving to the community I now live in had people coming to my door to sell me things. That is now quite a normal reality in my community because it is a target community because it is a low-income community.Māngere Budgeting Services Trust in its submission to the select community gave an example from a door-to-door sales situation where a family had been sold a vacuum cleaner. It was available on TradeMe for about $400 but that family did not have that money up front. They ended up getting into this contract arrangement where they ended up paying over $5000 for a vacuum cleaner to be able to provide a clean house for themselves.It is pleasing that this legislation will go some way towards preventing that degree of exploitation but without the interest rate cap it is not going to fully protect these families who are going to continue to be preyed on by these companies. We know that it is not uncommon for the annual percentage interest rates to be over 50 percent 100 percent or even higher. People are paying well over 100 percent of the cost of the actual item. That deserves our contempt. This is one step towards changing that exploitation.