Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: I move, That the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 20 October 2025.

This bill is all about making it easier for hard-working Kiwis to access the finance they need, when they need it. Over the years, our financial services landscape has become far too complex. This has put a huge regulatory burden on businesses, and consumers are the ones that have paid the price for that.

This bill is part of a package of reforms to address this. It aims to slash the red tape holding the sector back and remove unnecessary compliance costs. It amends the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act of 2003, better known colloquially as the CCCFA. This Act regulates lenders to protect the interests of consumers. There is a question about how well the Act does this, and that’s why this bill is needed.

I’m pleased to present to the House a bill that strives for efficiency and clarity in how consumer credit is regulated. The bill will help streamline financial service regulation, remove unnecessary compliance costs for lenders, and improve outcomes for consumers. This continues the work from last year to remove overly prescriptive requirements that were preventing Kiwis from accessing affordable finance.

The bill has four key features. It is, one, transferring regulatory responsibility for consumer credit from the Commerce Commission to the Financial Markets Authority; two, better aligning the financial services regulatory model, and this includes bringing consumer credit into the Financial Markets Authority’s licensing regime; thirdly, removing the due diligence duty for lenders, directors, and senior managers, which doesn’t fit well with the new regulatory model; and, fourthly, ensuring more proportionate consequences for breaching certain disclosure requirements.

I’d like now to expand a bit on each of these four components. Firstly, going from two conduct regulators to one by moving the CCCFA to the Financial Markets Authority; it’s about restoring plain common sense. It means that financial service providers answer to one conduct regulator, rather than two.

Secondly, aligning the approach to regulating financial markets means that the bill will better align how consumer credit is regulated. It does this by bringing consumer credit into the Financial Markets Authority’s licensing regime, where other financial services currently sit. The bill will also give the authority other regulatory tools such as direction orders and stop orders. This will not only bring consistency but it also ensures that the right tools are in the right places to protect the interests of consumers.

Thirdly, removing the due diligence duty from directors and senior managers: this means that directors and senior managers currently with a duty to exercise due diligence to ensure the lender’s compliance with the CCCFA obligations may also be personally liable if they breach that duty. This has led to lenders adopting overly conservative approaches to meeting their obligations. The end result is having some consumers being unable to access affordable credit. The regulatory tools I’ve just discussed provide a new layer of accountability, making the due diligence duty unnecessary, and, accordingly, the bill removes it.

Lastly, moderating liability for breaches of disclosure requirements: the bill makes two important changes to a part of the CCCFA that determines consequences for lenders who breach certain disclosure requirements. In 2015, the Act was amended so that a borrower was not liable for the cost of borrowing if the lender had not met these obligations—in other words, borrowers are not liable for interest or fees until the breaches are corrected. Firstly, for breaches that occur under the new arrangements in future, the bill would reverse this starting point. Instead, only when a court is persuaded that the breach caused loss or damage can the lender then be ordered to refund some or all of the costs of borrowing. Lenders will continue to be subject to other consequences for disclosure failures, and these include a fine of up to $200,000 for individuals and $600,000 for a body corporate.

The second change would apply retrospectively, and I want to talk about this part of the bill, which has received some attention. In 2019, changes were made to the CCCFA so that courts could decide what kind of refund, if any, was fair when lenders had breached disclosure requirements, but those changes applied only from 2019 onwards. That leaves a gap for possible breaches that happened between 2015 and 2019.

Right now, the law forces courts to make lenders refund all borrowing costs for that earlier period, even for very small mistakes that may not, in fact, have caused any loss to the borrower at all. In practice, this means that the banks could have to pay large sums for minor issues that caused no harm. Even if the error had no real impact, the bank might still have to issue a full refund. For smaller banks, having to make these large payouts could risk pushing them literally out of business. If that happened, it would reduce banking choices for consumers and harm competition in New Zealand’s banking sector.

This bill addresses that risk by applying the 2019 changes—made by a Labour administration—to past cases as well, protecting smaller lenders from potential collapse over minor immaterial mistakes, but it still allows courts to make fair decisions. If a bank’s breach has caused harm, the court can still require it to compensate affected consumers appropriately. This balanced approach protects competition, supports consumer confidence, and ensures fairness through the courts.

In conclusion, together I expect these changes to support a well-functioning financial services market that ultimately improves outcomes for Kiwi consumers, and it will do this by ensuring consumer credit regulation is proportionate and streamlined and is overseen by a regulator that is effectively equipped to protect the interests of consumers. This bill will simplify the financial services sector so that New Zealanders can get on with their lives, get ahead, and grow the economy. I commend this practical bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Let’s not get distracted: this bill represents the Government rewriting consumer protection laws to let two banks off the hook for money they owe people with loans. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders are owed thousands of dollars right now, and they have taken their banks to court. ASB and ANZ are facing this case in court with more than 180,000 of their customers. If you are one of these customers who is affected between 2015 and 2019, you could be owed money by your bank right now and you might not have heard about it because the banks are in fact relying on this Government’s change to retrospectively take away your rights to what you are owed.

Let’s also not forget that this is a change worth thousands of dollars per year to these mortgage holders—to ordinary people who have loans, to people who have large personal loans—and that will be a bigger financial penalty for them than any sort of tax cut this Government has legislated for, any kind of benefit that they have given to ordinary people. This is thousands of dollars at a time when a Government who campaigned on dealing with the cost of living crisis is taking money out of the pockets of people who are owed it legally, and saying to them that they cannot pursue their claim in court.

I heard the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs say that this was a change in 2019 which Labour pursued. Labour pursued a sensible change into the future because retrospective legislation in this way takes away the rights that people have accrued over that time. Consumer protection laws work when the Government of the day ensures that there are big penalties for the big players to be incentivised not to break the rules. And consumers who have to diligently make sure that they are complying with the masses of paperwork that they get when they get it from their banks—they don’t have a legal team to do that. They don’t have the ability to rock along to their Minister and ask politely for a change that they might like. Consumers have to comply, but the consumer protection laws are in place because, where it is onerous for consumers to comply, it also must be onerous for large corporate entities—and in this case banks—if they get something wrong.

If they get the message that a Government will roll over on the penalties that they owe, then what is the incentive for them to follow the rules? Where is the incentive for large corporate entities to have any respect for the rule of law in New Zealand when we will change things behind closed doors and hope that nobody notices when we introduce it a couple of days before the Budget; in a short period of five months where the select committee can consider these views, hopefully, with no one paying too much attention?

This is not how we should make law in New Zealand and it’s not the process that we would expect from this Government, because this Government says that they care about the cost of living. This Government proudly says that it’s going to break up the cozy pillow fight between the banks. But here we have a Minister who wants a pillow fight. He wants to take away the tools that he has to punish banks when they get it wrong. You know who didn’t? The 2015 Key Government. I have the Cabinet paper here that was introduced by the commerce Minister at the time where she said—about these rules that were being written then and this Minister says lack clarity and lack efficiency for consumers—that her Government of the day, at the time it was led by Prime Minister Bill English, was committed to protecting vulnerable consumers. That’s the kind of motivation that is required to write a rule which means that a bank will have to pay out the interest accrued on anything that it gets wrong with its disclosure regime.

Those disclosures are not meaningless disclosures. They are when we require banks and other large organisations to tell the customers what they mean, to tell them how much they have to pay and when they have to pay it back by; simple requirements that if not followed have big impacts on the consumers. I reject this idea that the Minister has introduced—with absolutely no evidence, no official advice in any of the Cabinet documentation and in any of the public documents that he has released—that there will be some sort of massive implication for our banking system and that there is systematic risk here. Name one bank, Minister, who has told you that they will fall over if you don’t change this rule.

I’ll tell you which banks have: the big ones that are well capitalised, that are well prepared for this because they have known about it for four years and are in court now and trying to get out of the debts they owe their customers—with this Government’s backing.

It’s pretty telling that we’ve got a Government that is campaigning on alleviating the cost of operating a big Australian bank, because so far, we haven’t seen legislation that actually relieves the cost of living pressures for those doing it the toughest. Instead, we have a piece of legislation that consumers didn’t ask for. If anything, it lets ANZ and ASB off the hook by limiting the liability that those big Australian banks face—and the context as well of them facing a class action lawsuit being undertaken by the thousands of consumers affected.

I think this is particularly bad when we also see that when the draft of this bill was in front of us, this wasn’t a retrospective change; it was something that was added later down the line. It really begs the question of: who is this Government working for? It’s really letting down thousands of people who have been underserved by two very wealthy, very powerful banks. The financial consequences for those people are real and material and could manifest in people actually having to make tough decisions in their households about how to live their lives.

It’s also, for me, wild that the Government is pursuing this despite ANZ and ASB both admitting in settlements with the Commerce Commission that they had failed to take the care necessary of a responsible lender. After those statements, they may have paid a tiny fraction—well, ASB borrowers, at least, received a tiny fraction of what they were entitled to under the law. Now, many other consumers are facing the bleak prospect of the carpet being pulled under them at a time that doesn’t happen very often, where consumers actually have the power to hold big banks accountable for their failures and their lack of transparency.

Even the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs in the past has acknowledged that it is unusual to intervene in a case before the courts—that the banks potentially broke the law and consumers should have the right to challenge them for it. Yet, the Government is taking this away from consumers by applying this bill retrospectively. I think this talks a lot about the Government’s priorities. As the member to my right, Arena Williams, said in her speech, this is coming off the back of a really, really busy media cycle just before the Budget—key distraction politics and poor lack of engagement on the ground with affected parties as well.

I do hope that in the select committee stage we hear from people and consumers, particularly ANZ and ASB consumers who are being affected by this.

Hon Member: Absolutely.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I hope we can hear from them—I know they said absolutely, but then I also hope that we don’t get the same patronising commentary from members of the Government parties as they did in previous debates when they were saying that, you know, people who work full time don’t have the time to make submissions. I hope that they now change those statements back to encouraging working families to make submissions on this bill on something that deeply, deeply affects them.

This is a Government that is not serving the interests of everyday people and it’s either serving the interests of big landlords who have multiple properties and are making a buck out of the housing crisis, serving the big banks, and then paying lip service by claiming they’ll do something eventually around the big supermarkets, and yet we haven’t really seen anything that substantiates all of the statements that we see in the media.

In the Greens we see one slightly commendable component of this piece of legislation, which is the transfer of regulatory responsibility from the Commerce Commission to the Financial Markets Authority. While we recognise that the transfer of this power actually makes some sense as the Financial Markets Authority has stronger regulatory tools, we cannot ignore the fact that this has been hidden in a really harmful piece of legislation affecting everyday people.

I find it appalling that the Minister would dare even talk about things like cost of living in a bill that literally strips people from being able to access justice and literal resources that could alleviate that very same cost of living. I can’t believe that we’ve got a Minister who’s able to deliver, with such confidence, such factually incorrect statements when speaking about this bill, because again, this House doesn’t allow us to accuse somebody of lying, but at the very least we can point out that a member is being factually incorrect, no matter how confident they’re being in the delivery of a statement.

We look forward to engaging with officials on a piece of legislation that we can tell they didn’t receive adequate scrutiny and consultation on, and the Green Party won’t be supporting this bill. We hope the Government dumps it and realises the wrong that they’ve done.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill

This bill is about giving confidence to consumers. Definitely, it is about giving confidence to consumers, and this bill is also to ensure that the credit markets are able to operate in a fair market. We need that kind of balance. The consumers are able to take advantage of credit markets only if we have the systems regulations that allow credit markets to work in a fair manner.

What this bill does is it shifts the regulatory responsibility for credit contracts and consumer finance from the Commerce Commission to the Financial Markets Authority. So it gives that kind of stronger oversight for credit markets, which would give more confidence to consumers, because obviously consumers need to access finance, and we want to see that Kiwis are able to access finance in an affordable manner. At the moment, we know that some of the rules are quite rigid, and people are not able to afford finance, and sometimes they can afford it but they’re just shut out of the market because of the rigid rules. So we want to see that the system is transparent; the system is streamlined, so that people are able to participate as a consumer in the credit market.

We have heard two members from that side, the Labour Party and the Green Party. I would say that, to that comment that there hasn’t been enough consultation on this bill, this bill is going to the select committee, as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has said, the Finance and Expenditure Committee. That will be the opportunity for people to submit and have their say during the select committee process.

There has been a lot of talk from those members about this bill being applied to any errors in documents between 2015 to 2019, and, yes, there is that retrospective element in here, but it is very important to note that it doesn’t take away the responsibility of banks. What it does is it gives the flexibility, it gives the discretion to courts to see that the decision, if there is a mistake—if there is an honest mistake—that the decision is proportionate to that mistake. At the moment, what happens is the penalty is that the whole interest cost and fee is refunded. But if there is an honest mistake and the consumer is not worse off, then the courts will have the discretion to make a decision. That is what this bill does. Of course, we would also like to hear about the retrospective component of this bill in the select committee, see what stakeholders have to say.

Overall, I would say that this bill is a good bill. It goes in the right direction to provide confidence to consumers, and also to provide the environment for players in the credit market to have regulations that work for them as well, because that balance is really important. With that, I would say that we commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill—the CCCFA, as we’ve been hearing. New Zealand First will support this bill to the select committee stage, but we do have some caution around some aspects of it, which I will touch on.

This bill streamlines regulation of the credit market and, in doing so, reduces red tape, something the coalition Government has been committed to doing wherever possible. One thing New Zealand First has always campaigned on—what’s been very important to us as a party; and the changes have been made in the past—is, again, we don’t want to go back to the time when it was very, very difficult to get a credit contract. There was a time when one would be harassed by credit companies, basically, to expose what coffees you were going to drink, what fast food you were going to eat, and what subscriptions you had. I’m not saying at all that this bill is taking us back there, but I think we’ve got to remember where we’ve come from. We must make sure that, for our economy to grow, we make these contracts practical and sensible, as people actually do require them. Interestingly—just trying to do a bit of research—credit contracts, just in our day-to-day lives, around mortgages, getting a credit card, arranged personal loans, hire purchases, and BNPL—buy now, pay later—are all examples of credit contracts in our day-to-day lives.

The one part that New Zealand First does support outright is the oversight of the transfer to the Financial Markets Authority from the Commence Commission, and that brings the credit market regulations in line with the Financial Markets Conduct Act. The caution is around the disclosures, and we’ve heard a number of members speak to that tonight. We will be interested in the process, through submissions through the select committee. Already we’re just hearing through the media—and, obviously, people start lobbying, as we know—but we’ve got to make a system, with the disclosures, that is fair.

We will be looking at that issue closely, around the court stuff that is already in process. We will want to understand more through submissions and find a fair way through that. Yes, the bill is saying lenders won’t be unfairly penalised for small or harmless mistakes, but we’ve got to find the right balance as well. It is important that creditors and borrowers are treated fairly, and we will be watching this legislation so that it strikes the right balance. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Here we are again, talking about the “c” word, but this is the triple “c” word that is dimly looked upon by many across the country as well. The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), as we know in our walks of life, has caused a number of issues and a lot of frustration across consumers and across the lending sector.

From July last year, this Government scrapped 11 pages of overly prescriptive affordable regulations that are no longer part of the CCCFA, enabling Kiwis to access finance with greater ease and certainly greater confidence. Those were rules that were designed to guard against the loan sharks, but they saw prospective borrowers having to justify—as we remember, Tom Rutherford—gym memberships—

Tom Rutherford: Coffees.

CAMERON BREWER: —coffees, and Netflix accounts. So this is the second tranche, and we’re very pleased to be here for the first reading, and we welcome submissions on the bill as it comes to the Finance and Expenditure Committee to assess.

If we look at the legislative statement—just to keep focused on the bill; others have tried to distract us as to the main purpose of this. But this bill is one of three that aims to simplify and streamline the effective regulation of our financial services. This bill contributes to that aim by aligning both the regulator and aspects of the regulatory model for consumer credit under the Financial Markets Conduct Act. It proposes a range of reforms that focus on promoting fairness, efficiency, and transparency in markets for credit, and that support consumer participation.

This has been long overdue. This has been something that’s been frustrating those in the sector, and consumers and lenders, for a long time. This is another tranche of cleaning up the CCCFA—the “c” word that’s agonised a lot of people for a long time. And it’s this Government; that Government tried to fix up the CCCFA and nothing happened. Remember that? They tried to. Mr Twyford said, “Oh, well, we’ve tried to send out some signals to the market.”, and nothing changed. We came in in July last year and got rid of those overly prescriptive loaning regulations, and now this is the second tranche of cleaning up what needs to be done. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ve never been so happy to hear the word “credit” in my life.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to stand to take a call on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill. But, unlike the member, Cameron Brewer, who’s thankfully just taken his seat, I’m not standing up to speak in support of this bill. I think this bill should be called the “National Looking After the Bank (Not Everyday Kiwis) Bill”, or for short, it could just be called the “Sharks Are Back Bill”, because it’s probably worth casting our minds back to the problem that this bill was addressing.

I have here, an article: “Loan sharks leave three homeless Auckland mums in almost $150,000 [worth] of debt”. Now, it goes on to detail that “More than half the debts were to South Auckland finance companies charging high interest and a raft of default payment fees on goods, such as cars, fridges, and clothes.” Now, the people in the article, the person who’d been mentoring these three women, said that they did need to take some responsibility for the decision making, but also that “there is always an element of avoidability.”, but, ultimately, that the issue here is “profits over ethical lending”.

I think, here, it’s good to get a snapshot—and the article includes it—of the debt levels that these three mothers had. A 31-year-old mother of six had a total debt of $50,000 from 13 debts, including eight debts to finance companies, three for utilities, and two to Government departments, and the largest single debt of $16,800 to a car-finance company. A 33-year-old single mother of five had a total debt of $19,000 from 10 debts, including five to finance companies, three to other sources such as medical—that’s taking your kids to the doctor—Sky TV, a friend, and two to Government departments, and a largest single debt of $11,000 to a car-finance company for a car she no longer had in her possession. And a 30-year-old single mother of three with a total debt of $75,000 from seven debts, including four to finance companies, one for rent arrears, two to Government departments, and the largest single debt of $41,000 was to a student loan.

Now, you don’t have to look far to find further media reporting instances of a finance company charging 182.5 percent per annum on top of credit and default fees. And, interestingly, that was a prosecution brought under the commission’s first case under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, which is exactly what you are trying to undo with this bill.

On the announcement that you were bringing this bill forward, Auckland financial mentor David Verry, who has 30 years of experience in banking, said that “the Government”—that’s the members opposite—“[were] not telling the whole story.” He goes on to say that “Doing away with the need for affordability assessments, that’s going to do away with our ability to challenge loans that basically shouldn’t have been made. Allowing lenders to set their own standards will undoubtedly lead to more people arriving on the doorsteps of budget services.” It’s worth noting that those are the same budget services that this Government has pared back and has cut for our communities.

The solution that we had put in place was to put protections in place to shield Kiwis from predatory lenders. This bill undoes that. This bill gives the banks a free pass. There will be 150,000 mortgage holders who will miss out on millions of dollars of compensation because of this bill. So the sharks are back. The sharks are sitting opposite and are pushing through a bill that does nothing for everyday Kiwis but looks after the big banks. That is shameful.

Oh, thank you, Madam Speaker. I just had to wake myself up from that sort of ramble from the previous member, Reuben Davidson. I was trying to link whether there was any relevance to the actual bill at hand, and I was like “Oh, is he on the right bill?”, because I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill.

But, anyway, this is part one of the holy trilogy of financial services bills. Later on tonight we’re going to be talking about the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill and the Financial Markets Conduct Amendment Bill, so they’re all connected. But it’s really important that members opposite stay tuned so that they can keep up with the financial literacy that’s required to understand and dispel these bills.

This amendment bill is really just to tidy up four key things. But, really, if I was just to focus on the main element of it, it’s about proportionality. If a bank, for example, forgets to do a return address on an envelope, they are liable for disproportionate amounts of liability risk. It’s just nuts, because we’re about fairness, and fairness cuts both ways. This bill is a tidy-up, it’s appropriate, it’s proportionate, and therefore I commend it to the House.

The banks currently owe hundreds of millions of dollars to ordinary New Zealanders. They are liable under the law passed by the National Party in 2015 that was in place until 2019. That is the law as it stands. They are in debt to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. They are being sued in court for that debt. ANZ and ASB are being sued in court and this is a very rare bill that actually names the case and says that the case must stop, that those people who have current claims can’t claim it under the law as it stands today, and that we’re going to change the rules under their feet.

As for the ACT Party—who have introduced a bill today that they say upholds the rule of law and upholds property rights and contractual certainty—to have it lie in their mouth to now change the rules under contract retrospectivity, it is bewildering at best. The fact of the matter is—and I’ve been contacted; many of us have been contacted by the banks. The banks are very good lobbyists. They spin a good yarn. I won’t be influenced by their yarn. That party over there has been influenced by the banks to change the law in the banks’ favour and against the interests of consumers. It is absolutely shameful.

This isn’t just some minor tweak. This isn’t just some clarification. This is stripping the rights away from consumers. Under section 99 of the Act, as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs admitted, it says that a bank cannot charge interest where they don’t accurately disclose the terms of the loan. We need clauses like that to keep banks in line.

Now, over time, the rules have been adjusted, but you don’t change rules that confer property rights retrospectively unless you’re the National Party and you want to look after your mates, the banks. You’re influenced by the banks and you’re listening far too carefully to their silver-tongued lobbyists.

The Legislation Design and Advisory Committee has an entire chapter devoted to non-retrospectivity and it makes it very clear that the most vile kind of retrospectivity is where rights have accrued and when litigation is on foot. It is undermining the rule of law. This Government is running a tinpot democracy where it will change the law at the whim of lobbyists and banks. That is not a nation ruled by law; it is a nation ruled by the capriciousness of the Government and the whims of their mates, and it’s shameful.

The fact is that there is no evidence. They talk a big game, but there’s no evidence of any insolvency risk. The two major banks who are currently being sued—and here’s the irony—are very clear that they are not at risk of insolvency by these actions. They’ve said that. So there’s some imaginary smaller player out there who might be at risk. Well, first of all, don’t take away the right to pursue this action in court now. If there’s going to be retrospectivity—and I don’t think there should be—let it be for claims not yet filed.

I just want to say there’s a ray of hope. I heard the New Zealand First Party, a party that does have some record of standing up for the little guy, and they said that they’re supporting this to the select committee with reservations. I’m glad to hear that because I’m very hopeful that when they do examine exactly what’s going on and they listen at select committee to submissions—and I’ll say this now: I hope people who are engaged in that litigation will come to select committee and explain that they’ve got a case that they’d like to be ruled on by judges and not by parliamentarians. I hope that New Zealand First will stick up for the little guy, and I know that, unlike that Government, we will.

I also rise to proudly support the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill. I proudly support this bill because it is a vital step in our National-led Government’s mission to ease cost of living, to cut the red and the green tapes, and to make life more affordable and accessible for hard Kiwi New Zealanders.

Now, this is what we’re delivering tonight. The Government is working relentlessly to restore common sense to the credit market. We are shifting regulations to the Financial Markets Authority to create one single effective regulator and to end the confusion and duplication under the current regime. We are also making alignments between the CCCFA, mentioned many times tonight—the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act—and other financial market legislations to support a more consistent and proportionate regulatory system. This bill also replaces the rigid certification system with a sensible licensing framework, giving lenders the flexibility to make fairer decisions and while keeping consumers protected.

Now, some members have raised questions over the retrospective element of this bill. So let me be clear: there is a method to what we are doing. As New Zealand Herald business editor Jenée Tibshraeny reported, the previous law forced banks to cancel and repay interest and fees for minor administrative errors that caused no harm—underlined. Already, according to the New Zealand Herald, the customers involved in this class action have been reimbursed $43 million after the banks self-reported these mistakes to the Commerce Commission. The commerce and consumer affairs Minister, Scott Simpson, has been very clear: courts must have the power to act fairly and justly. This bill restores that power.

A National Government focuses on solutions, so we are here to remove pointless barriers. We will lower costs and we put Kiwi consumers first. As a proud member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and also the last member to speak on this bill, I look forward to hearing public submissions to ensure that we deliver, practical, fair reforms that New Zealanders deserve. So I commend this practical bill to the House.

The question is, That the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill be considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Instruction to the Finance and Expenditure Committee