Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Mr Speaker. I do very much want those seven minutes and 39 seconds because there are voices that have not yet been heard in this debate and I want to report them. In my earlier part of this speech I talked about the collaborative work we had done in the Finance and Expenditure Committee and some of the authors of this bill Mr Andrew Shann a lawyer who worked on earlier versions of this legislation; of course the Minister Kris Faafoi; and the very cooperative work done by Mr Brett Hudson Mr Andrew Bayly Mr Greg O'Connor Dr Duncan Webb and others in the select committee. But from here I want to turn to the voices of the submissions as to why this legislation is necessary. Minister Faafoi and Mr Brett Hudson have taken the House through some of the technicalities of the bill. Here are the voices of the people who we are legislating for.When I last spoke I referred to Mr David Seymour—unusually taking one for the team and contacting a pay-day lender one of these lenders that we are trying to regulate a little better. Just one contact but from there he was badgered with texts and with messages urging him to take out one of these high-cost loans. I don't believe he did. Nevertheless that process of being badgered is something that all people who take out high-cost loans are subjected to. We had many organisations speak to us but just one person who had taken out a high-cost loan. Sarah Newham very bravely came and spoke to us about her own experience of what it had been like. She took out a pay-day loan in 2018. She's a sole mum and she had kids' birthdays coming up and she needed some cash and she thought she could manage. So she took out a high-cost loan borrowed just $400. She said it was really easy. She went online answered a few questions and the money appeared in her bank account just like that—too easy.She'd budgeted terribly carefully to make sure that she could manage the repayments and she did really well for the first few weeks. She made the first couple of payments—nearly a quarter of her income—but then she missed the next one. She contacted the lender. She tried to arrange matters but she ended up getting penalties and getting higher interest. She got slammed with extra costs for this loan because she was late with one payment and things got worse and worse. She said there were weeks when she had to choose between paying electricity and paying for food. And it got to the point where she was begging them to send the debt to a debt collector because then at least it would be finalised at least there would be no penalties. But they wouldn't. Eventually she got the local budgeting service involved and they got the lender to send it to a debt collector and from there she was able to manage the debt. So she said it was terrible and it was really hard to make the repayments. This was a woman who was trying to do the right thing. Eventually she got it sorted. But here's the kicker: on her birthday she got an email from that high-cost lender who said Happy Birthday Sarah. How about you treat yourself with a loan?" That's appalling. That is appalling. A loan is not a treat. So that is a story from someone who actually experienced what it was like to be subject to the whims of a high-cost lender.We heard a wonderful submission from Komiti Pasefika of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions a group of wonderful Pasefika men and women who came in to talk to us about what it was like in the Pacific community. There are some real cultural obligations in the Pacific communities: funerals weddings being a chief. People in that community can often be subject to the pressures of needing to get cash and get it fast and then they end up subject to high-cost loans. What they begged us to do was to make sure that loan sharks were properly regulated—that if people did take out loans it was done in a responsible fashion and their capacity to repay was properly assessed. So they asked us for regulation of high-cost lenders similar regulation of retail truck shops much more effective enforcement and much stronger regulation of debt collection. Why? To protect members of that community. We heard—and this is I think one of the most enjoyable submissions in a way—from the Josephite Justice Network the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. I was a convent schoolgirl and I remember the nuns. I tell you these nuns were the most radical ladies I've ever met. They were just wonderful. And so to Sisters Carmel Adrienne and Marie thank you for coming in and speaking to us. They came from Gisborne and they talked of the difficulties that people were faced with in their communities when they had to manage these short-term high-cost loans. Again they talked to the people they worked with on a day-by-day basis in budgeting services when people turned up just asking for assistance just to manage what to many of us is only a small amount of money. But if you are impoverished and caught with a high-cost loan it becomes the end of the world really. So they wanted a ban on retail truck shops. They wanted more effective enforcement. They wanted stronger regulation of debt collection. This legislation does keep faith with those radical ladies who came in to talk to us.Finally I wish to speak of FinCap and in particular of Tim Barnett who is actually a former member of this House who's the chief executive of FinCap and one of the people who works with him Soraiya Daud. They came in and made a whole series of technical arguments but the argument they made most strongly was that there should be a cap on the interest rates that can be charged by high-cost lenders. Now that was not in the original legislation. Originally we had a cap which was a cap of the total amount of interest that could be charged but not a cap on the actual rate. But FinCap which represents all sorts of budget services argued strongly for this cap. Mr Brett Hudson mentioned that it was not included in the original legislation but as a select committee we listened to what people in the sector actually wanted what they felt was needed to ensure that some of our poorest and most vulnerable are protected and that is why in the final version of this legislation that has come back to the House from the Finance and Expenditure Committee we do have a cap on interest rates. So now if you have a high-cost loan if a lender issues high-cost loans the maximum interest rate that can be charged is 0.8 percent a day. Now that's still 230-something-or-other percent interest per year. I'd have to do the maths again. It's still a very high interest rate but nevertheless it limits it. It sets a cap on it. We are doing that because of the work of FinCap and so they too are some of the authors of this bill."