Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. I am actually really delighted to have an opportunity to speak on this bill because as it was being developed I had a bit to do with the various budget groups who brought the issue to my attention. I think there are two things I want to address in this speech which the last speaker Jamie Arbuckle referred to. He said Well what is the reason for this bill? You know people get into debt but why this bill in particular?" There's a bit of a background as to what's going on here with these attachment orders and why it particularly applies to people with benefits and it's to do with the industrialisation of attachment orders. So it used to be that in order to get an attachment order a creditor someone to whom money was owed would have to get the attachment order and then take it along to the person's employer or in this case to Work and Income (WINZ)—actually on an individual basis—and get it all processed through the WINZ systems and eventually perhaps get the attachment order being seen to. That's sort of the process sort of 20-odd years ago—25 30 maybe longer. But it turns out that the contemporary process is quite different because at the moment what happens is a person can get an attachment order and take it along to WINZ and it gets processed through the WINZ computer systems automatically—automatically so the attachment just goes on straight away. In fact so automated is this process that it turns out that there are companies that specialise in doing it. So they buy the debt and they get attachment orders on it and they take these debts along to WINZ—the attachment orders—in bulk lots and get them bulk processed through the WINZ systems. But we have enabled the industrialisation of making poverty even worse through the WINZ systems. Now—Simon Court: Debtors deserve to get their money back.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Of course people deserve to get their money back; there's no doubt about that. But when a person is on a benefit it becomes even worse and even harder to survive if a significant amount of money is being taken out in order to pay old debt.It gets even worse than this because some of what has gone on is irresponsible lending. So it's lending where the person selling the products has not taken care has not taken due regard to ensure that the person is actually able to repay the debt. The attachment order process makes that worse.Now what this bill would do would ensure that if a person is going to lend to someone who is on benefit or if a person is going to lend at all because they cannot be sure if they're going to get their money back because they can't do an attachment order so easily they would actually have to go through the proper credit checks. In other words it would make sure that people lending money did so responsibly. So that's one of the first reasons to support this bill. It is because of the industrialised process—at the moment the industrialised process encourages poor lending behaviour.I just want to address the issue that was raised by the member from New Zealand First worrying about the victims of crime. Actually he's got a point. He's got a good point on that one. I think there is some regard that needs to be given to the priority of debt and which debt should be repaid first. I agree that reparations to victims of crime should be perhaps further up the list but that is exactly the sort of issue that could have been discussed through a select committee process. I urge the member that if he wants to make that priority this is an ideal bill to do it on to take that issue to the select committee and discuss it in full. Now let's be quite aware that a lot of these attachment orders are not to do with reparations for crime. There will certainly be some of those that would be the case but I'm going to urge the member to think about taking this opportunity to ensure that there is a full discussion of where debt should be prioritised what sort of debt should be repaid first out of the limited resources that beneficiaries have. I take his point that it is important to ensure that criminal reparations are properly repaid but that should not mean that we don't discuss this bill at all; in fact it should create an extra reason to discuss this bill.So for those three reasons—(1) because of the industrialisation of attachment orders (2) because of the poor lending practices and (3) because of the way we can talk about the prioritisation of reparations to victims—I think that we should support this bill through to select committee.Debate interrupted."