Lending curbs sure to pay off

A PROPOSAL for stricter regulations on payday lenders should be welcomed

A PROPOSAL for stricter regulations on payday lenders should be welcomed.

Anglicare NT’s Rob Rooth recently spent the morning sitting out the front of a Darwin loan shop. Within half an hour of opening, more than a dozen people had wandered in, been handed cash and wandered out, lumped with a potentially problematic debt.

On the same street was a bank, where loans can take days or weeks to be approved — too long for people who need to put food on the table or pay rent before their next pay cheque or Centrelink payment comes in.

Mr Rooth says online lenders are often worse than those with physical shopfronts.

The very people who need short-term loans are often the same people who lack the financial savvy to know what they’re signing up for.

The last thing the poorest people in our society need is loan sharks circling them like vultures.

Sadly, the short-term money industry has had — and still has — its share of unscrupulous operators.

Such operators have no one but themselves to blame for drawing the attention of regulators and Federal politicians.

Both sides of the political divide suggest something ought to be done, although a proposed Bill put forward by the Turnbull Government for consultation last year has sat gathering dust.

Local member Luke Gosling and shadow consumer affairs minister Tim Hammond should be congratulated for cracking the whip on the introduction of tougher rules for lenders.

If it makes its way through parliament, it will be a small, but welcome, step along the road to improving the lot of Australia’s — and the Territory’s — most disadvantaged.