Curran Clare: Credit Contracts and Financial Services Law Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Credit Contracts and Financial Services Law Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17721. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you Mr Chair; how gracious. I would like to begin the debate in the Committee stage of this bill the Credit Contracts and Financial Services Law Reform Bill by making a special mention of the woman who has campaigned consistently over the last 6 years for people who are preyed upon by loan sharks and that is Carol Beaumont my colleague. She has taken this issue and been like a terrier in the cause of trying to ensure that there is progress. Of course there have been other people involved and of course this is a Government bill that we are supporting tonight although we do have some issues that you are going to hear a lot about. Carol Beaumont has put a lot effort and commitment into this bill and I think it is really important that the Committee recognises that.I also want to make a special mention. I know that we often thank officials but I do actually want to say to the officials that this has been quite a complex piece of work and your work has been exemplary on this and really detailed and thoughtful. I know that it has not been the easiest bill. This bill has had a long gestation as I think the Minister of Consumer Affairs acknowledged. It has gone through several Ministers. I think that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Consumer Affairs might be the third Minister—Hon Member: Fourth.CLARE CURRAN: —the fourth—who has taken this bill through which is another issue that has to be put on the table because the time taken to get this sort of legislation through the processes it needs does need to come under scrutiny in the House. [Interruption] Five I am being told—five Ministers!Carol Beaumont: Seven or six.CLARE CURRAN: Oh my goodness. Well anybody listening out there would be scratching their head thinking: “Well why?”. We know that there are some complex issues but we have certainly seen far more complex legislation on other complex issues rushed through this House at breakneck speed. This particular piece of legislation is about addressing issues for the lowest paid some of the most vulnerable people in our communities who are being preyed upon by some of the most unscrupulous and rotten people in our communities and one would actually think that this would have been given a higher priority.What I also want to note—because I think we need to tease this out later on—is the actual resource that has been put in behind the scenes to do the important work on this. I have got some question marks around that and I do want to put the Minister on notice that work that needs to be done is still to be done on this bill. We need to be reassured not just in the Commerce Commission but in the ministry itself that there is the resource that is required to do the work and to get this thing through so that it is not just passed in the House but so that the regulations are written and it can come into effect as soon as possible.We debated earlier this week the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill which went through—whoosh; just like that—under urgency because there was a great deal of political pressure and community unrest and unease out there. All of a sudden the stops got pulled out and that bill got through. The point is that our most exploited and our most vulnerable people are usually the people who have the least voice and therefore they get ignored in the course of things. So I guess our champion of those people will not be letting up and neither will the Labour Party.Just on that cycle of debt and poverty that this measure is trying to address I will give a little example—and I note that others in this Committee no doubt will be giving examples. Just recently in my electorate office in Dunedin South I had a case of someone coming in who was in absolute desperate straits having got themselves into terrible debt and being a solo parent having no wage. For various reasons which obviously I am not going to go into they had found themselves with lots of debt. That person was begging to use me as a reference to a loan shark because they could not see any other way out of their predicament. I hasten to add needless to say that that is not the course of action that I have taken.The amount of work that you have to do with those constituents is quite high because of the situation that they find themselves. There is self-harm there is desperation and it appears that there is no way out for many of them. I look around the Chamber today and challenge any MP to say that they have not had those sorts of experiences with people who find themselves in these sorts of situations. People are in these situations for lots and lots of reasons but the commonality of those reasons includes the high cost of living; low wages; the rising cost of basics such as food electricity etc.; the lack of language; and the lack of financial literacy. I say to the Government today that the Government claims to have made raising financial literacy in our community a priority and that these are the people who have not got the financial literacy and find themselves in these sorts of situations. The Government has lots of levers that it can use to effect change.This is a pretty good piece of legislation and I am disappointed with New Zealand First’s decision about it. I understand why it is making that decision but I would alsolike to say that an awful lot of work has gone into the bill. A number of those levers are being exercised to effect change but one of the most critical levers has been left out and that is the cap on interest rates. We have heard that there is so much movement internationally on this issue that there is movement in many many jurisdictions on this issue and yet New Zealand has decided that we should not go there and the advice that we got at the select committee was that a cap on interest rates was seen as being a blunt instrument.Well I suppose I would like to say in response two things. One is to ask the Government to show us the concrete evidence that it will not work. Show us that and also think about the blunt instruments that are being used every day out there in our communities by loan sharks and repossession crooks who are turning up with literally blunt instruments and actually using them on citizens on people in our communities to try to see their debts paid—debts based on 100 percent sometimes 100-plus percent interest rates. Those are the sorts of blunt instruments that I would have thought and the community would expect that this Government would address and not take into account the alleged ideological blunt instrument of interest rate caps which is totally out of step with what is happening internationally in this space and is being used in this sort of legislation.We will not be letting up on this and I am hoping that the Minister can provide us with a bit more detail around why interest rate caps are seen as a blunt instrument. Just on that the Supplementary Order Papers that have been put forward by Labour by Carol Beaumont are simply trying to address this as is an accompanying complementary Supplementary Order Paper put forward by Te Ururoa Flavell from the Māori Party which we also support. We ask the Committee during the Committee stage to do the work that the Committee stage should do in the Chamber.