Ryall Tony: Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Bill — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8732] 
Hon TONY RYALL (NZ National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 This is a very important section and I shall pick up on a comment made by Mr Brent Catchpole of New Zealand First. Last month I received a phone call from some constituents in Mount Maunganui—[ 
Interruption 
] Unlike four of those five members opposite my home telephone number is in the phone book. Anyway those people rang me because they were victims of a buy-back. Labour members might think that is funny but those people were victims of a buy-back—a scam. They had been encouraged by a close friend of the family to enter into an arrangement whereby they would assign the title of their home to a trust of some sort or to a third party and in return they would receive a weekly income of $300. That may not sound like a lot of money to some members but when a person is on a pension $300 a week is an awful lot of extra money. They subsequently found out that the title to their home had been transferred from the company they had entered into this arrangement with to another party based in Hawke’s Bay—so it has got even more removed now—and subsequently the third party in Hawke’s Bay claimed that they had no knowledge that there was a rip-off involved in the buy-back arrangement. It is an absolutely dreadful circumstance. 
Fortunately we have been able to arrange for those people to have legal representation pro bono by a prominent solicitor in Tauranga and I do know that they are working with the Government’s agents to try to work through the situation. I acknowledge the excellent work the Government did in very quickly trying to attack the people behind the buy-back schemes. However Mr Catchpole suggested that people such as my constituents in Mount Maunganui would not be considered to be under an oppressive contract. I draw the Committee’s attention to clause 96. Mr Catchpole said that because the contract might not have been deemed to be oppressive at the time it was signed they would have no rights. But I would say particularly in the case of my constituents that that buy-back arrangement was harsh unconscionable and a breach of the reasonable standards of commercial practice. 
I tell members that my constituents are covered by this part of the law and they must be entitled as the Minister is indicating to the full force of the law. They are retired people who have saved up for their entire lives to have a house in a very nice part of Mount Maunganui and they were led to believe that their money would be safe by entering into an arrangement that transferred the title of their property. They have been duped and ripped off. The likelihood is that those people will lose their house. Those sorts of people should be taken to the cleaners and I tell Mr Catchpole that clause 92 applies to them. 
I would like to see this Government move to really rack up the penalties in respect of those people. The people who perpetrated that buy-back scheme are despicable deceitful dishonest and crooked. They should not be involved in any sort of commercial transaction like that again. 
 Never again should those people be involved in any arrangement like that whatsoever. So in supporting this part I say quite clearly that I do consider that the people who were subject to those unconscionable buy-back arrangements are covered by this part. The Minister agrees—no doubt with the support of official advice—and I think that the Committee should be very very determined to support the efforts of the authorities in cracking down on these buy-back arrangement people.