Submission to the Credit Contracts Legislation Amendment Bill

The Salvation Army is generally supportive of many of the amendments in this Bill. These are detailed below in our submission.

We welcome the Government’s attempts to reform this area of credit contracts and consumer finance, particularly as our view was that the 2015 reforms were insufficient to truly protect consumers’ interests. Consequently, this could be an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to effectively reform this law and sector and place the public and consumers at the core of this sector and not predatory practices.

In that vein, we submit that focus of these current reforms should specifically be the protection of New Zealand consumers, particularly those deemed vulnerable and marginalised consumers.

We specifically want to highlight the main purpose of the principal Act, particularly section 3(1) that states [the] primary purpose of this Act is to protect the interests of consumers in connection with credit contracts, consumer leases, and buy-back transactions of land (emphasis added).

This primary purpose in our view shapes and guides The Salvation Army’s advocacy concerning vulnerable consumers in our submission to this Bill.