MADELEINE KING MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS
SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING FOR RESOURCES
SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING FOR SMALL BUSINESS
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR BRAND

MILTON DICK MP
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR OXLEY 

JOANNE RYAN MP
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR LALOR

SHIREEN MORRIS
LABOR CANDIDATE FOR DEAKIN

Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs Madeleine King today hosted a Payday Lending Community Roundtable at EACH in Ringwood with local support and advocacy groups calling for an end to the payday lending rip off.

Today’s event sent a powerful message from the community that out- of-control loan sharks are ripping off vulnerable Australians and must be reined in.

We have heard from local support groups, churches and leading advocacy organisations that the rorting must stop.

Labor has introduced a Private Member’s Bill to reform payday lending and rent-to-buy laws known as Small Amount Credit Contract (SACC) Reforms to protect consumers from soaring interest rates and skyrocketing fees

In a crushing blow to thousands of victims of payday loans, Scott Morrison has appointed good mate and disgraced MP, Stuart Robert, to the Assistant Treasury ministry with responsibility for payday lending reforms. Stuart Robert earlier this year campaigned inside the Liberal Party against attempts to introduce payday lending legislation.

Josh Frydenberg should take these critical reforms off Stuart Robert and personally take responsibility for its urgent passage through the Parliament.

Labor’s Bill is an identical copy of draft legislation released by Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack when he was the Minister for Small Business in 2017. The Bill was approved by Cabinet, but later buried as a result of pressure from its own back bench.

 In February this year, government officials said that the legislation would be introduced in the Autumn session of parliament, but it never appeared.

The government’s inaction is causing unnecessary delays to the SACC reforms which would:

• impose a ceiling on the total payments that can be made under a rent-to-buy scheme;
• require payday loans to have equal repayments and equal payment intervals;
• remove the ability for SACC providers to charge monthly fees on residual term of a loan where a consumer fully repays the loan early;
• ban unsolicited sales of the schemes; and
• introduce broad anti-avoidance protections to prevent payday lenders and rent-to-buy companies from circumventing the rules.

Payday Lending Facts and Figures

The figures below are taken from a recent report from the Consumer Action Law Centre

• The rate of vulnerable Australian families being taken advantage of by payday lenders has almost doubled over the past decade, with 650,000 financially stressed households now holding a payday loan. 
• The number of borrowers taking out more than one payday loan in the preceding 12 months has grown from 17.2 per cent in 2005 to 38.0 per cent in 2015. 
• This means that average number of loans per loan borrower is 3.64.
• 40 per cent of people who entered into a SACC loan were unemployed.
• A quarter received more than 50% of their income from Centrelink.