Ms ANDERSON - 2006-03-29
There has been a lot of interest in the bush about proposed changes to book-up practices. Can you update the House on the consultation process?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, this is, indeed, a very important process that the member for Macdonnell has asked about. All members would be aware of the longstanding problems that we have had with rather unscrupulous practices within both remote and urban stores where, beyond simply allowing people to use their cards in store, they have, on some occasions, not only taken the card into custody, if you like, in the store, but also the PIN number of the customer so that they have absolute open access to the accounts of that customer to withdraw whatever amount of money that they decide they are owed.
That practice has attracted not only the attention of our own Consumer Affairs Commissioner, but also the major banks and the ACCC and ASIC. We held a forum in Alice Springs late last year, and we have now sent out a discussion paper putting some proposals for reforming the practices of stores in a way that they will not continue these unscrupulous practices.
We are very pleased with the response to the discussion paper: 36 written submissions and dozens of oral submissions. The views represent more than 200 groups and organisations around the Northern Territory. The majority of submissions, by far, favoured better regulation of such practices.
We will look at various options as to how we could regulate the activities of stores around these practices. The two most likely areas we will look at include the banks building into their EFTPOS agreements with the stores some code of practice or expectation of the code of practice. We can mandate a code of practice for stores which precludes the taking and use of the PIN number of these clients. We will now move forward on this.
Madam Speaker, we are leading the country on this. Everyone in the banking sector and the federal regulators are very interested in what we are doing here with this and other indigenous consumer affairs issues. I am very proud of the work of the commissioner and his commission.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, this is, indeed, a very important process that the member for Macdonnell has asked about. All members would be aware of the longstanding problems that we have had with rather unscrupulous practices within both remote and urban stores where, beyond simply allowing people to use their cards in store, they have, on some occasions, not only taken the card into custody, if you like, in the store, but also the PIN number of the customer so that they have absolute open access to the accounts of that customer to withdraw whatever amount of money that they decide they are owed.
That practice has attracted not only the attention of our own Consumer Affairs Commissioner, but also the major banks and the ACCC and ASIC. We held a forum in Alice Springs late last year, and we have now sent out a discussion paper putting some proposals for reforming the practices of stores in a way that they will not continue these unscrupulous practices.
We are very pleased with the response to the discussion paper: 36 written submissions and dozens of oral submissions. The views represent more than 200 groups and organisations around the Northern Territory. The majority of submissions, by far, favoured better regulation of such practices.
We will look at various options as to how we could regulate the activities of stores around these practices. The two most likely areas we will look at include the banks building into their EFTPOS agreements with the stores some code of practice or expectation of the code of practice. We can mandate a code of practice for stores which precludes the taking and use of the PIN number of these clients. We will now move forward on this.
Madam Speaker, we are leading the country on this. Everyone in the banking sector and the federal regulators are very interested in what we are doing here with this and other indigenous consumer affairs issues. I am very proud of the work of the commissioner and his commission.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016