HOMEFUND ADVISORY SERVICE
Mr HUMPHERSON: My question without notice is addressed to the Minister for Consumer Affairs. Is the minister aware of concerns raised by a group of HomeFund borrowers in Sydney today? What action is the minister taking to advise the group about the HomeFund advisory service?
Ms MACHIN: I thank the honourable member for Davidson for his timely question. The answer to the first part is yes, I did indeed meet this morning, along with my colleague the Hon. Robert Webster from another place, with a small group of HomeFund borrowers who turned up at the back of Parliament House. Some of us may have noticed them. This is more than can be said for the honourable member for Heffron. She did not even bother to meet them as we did. She left them to stand out there on what is a very hot day, abandoned in the midday sun. She does not care. I can only assume she was embarrassed.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Murwillumbah to order.
Ms MACHIN: Her hysterical and much publicised attempts to whip up a large crowd failed so miserably.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Mount Druitt to order.
Ms MACHIN: In the last few weeks she has told us, "What a big crowd you are going to have out there and I guess it is a shame you cannot get your bill on." The honourable member told us how they were going to fill Macquarie Street. They sent out flyers. We counted the number of people there and I think there were 54 people, including a lot of children. I pay a tribute to those borrowers who did turn up, and who are no doubt disappointed they did not see their so-called mentor. They came in and met with us. I commend them for their politeness and the way in which they put their case. It was very lucid and constructive. If the honourable member for Heffron is as genuine as she tries to make out at public meetings when she has got a somewhat captive audience, I would have thought she would have been out there to meet this crowd, which, after all, she was trying to encourage to come along. Obviously, the numbers were not big enough. There was not a big enough crowd. What a shallow effort!
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the Deputy Premier to order. I call the honourable member for Kogarah to order for the third time.
Ms MACHIN: I have said before, and I think it is becoming increasingly obvious, that the honourable member for Heffron is using these genuine people as puppets for her own political agenda.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition to order.
Ms MACHIN: I do not really know what she thinks she is likely to gain. Last year she had difficulties with her preselection. Perhaps she is one of the leadership contenders, a matter which was much vaunted a few years ago. That could get her back in the race. It is an open race. It is worth recapping the events of the last few months. Ever since the Parliament negotiated the HomeFund restructuring package in a very lengthy sitting late last year - honourable members would remember and regret the occasion because most were just kept hanging around - the honourable member for Heffron has been like someone whose bubble has just burst. She hated that restructure because it has solved the problems of a large number of HomeFund borrowers. This is the last thing that the honourable member for Heffron wanted. Since then she has spent every moment scheming with her collaborators to sink that scheme.
[
Interruption]
She is not getting much support from members in her party, so she has to look elsewhere. People like Mr O'Keeffe authorised a record number of loans in his days and was an enthusiastic advocate for the scheme at the City Central Co-operative, a co-operative that has the highest proportion of poorly originated loans. What a great adviser and advocate for HomeFund borrowers! The honourable member for Heffron has had ample opportunity to participate genuinely in the resolution of borrowers' problems, but she has refused to do so at every turn. All last year she was invited by the HomeFund Commissioner to make an input into his operations and the problems of the scheme, but she provided nothing. I have written to the honourable member on a number of occasions asking for details of borrowers and complaints she has received about them, but she consistently refuses.
Yesterday's excuse about not having the resources to provide me with a briefing was pathetic. I do not want a briefing. All she has to do is fax me
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letters from borrowers in trouble so I can send them to the appropriate authorities, or she could give me their names and addresses. How am I supposed to deal with them if the honourable member for Heffron consistently refuses to make that information available to the Government? You can call me cynical, which I hope you will not, but I believe the reason is that she does not have many complaints or, if she does, she is afraid the Government might be able to help those borrowers and destroy her little political game.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Campbelltown to order.
Ms MACHIN: We saw the way in which the honourable member for Heffron hijacked a meeting of borrowers at Plumpton about 10 days ago and misled them on how the information service is working. That meeting was meant to be an informal and non-political session for borrowers. Funnily enough, it was hijacked. Last week I proved in this House that all these letters were typed on Mr O'Keeffe's typewriter but were signed by one of the borrowers, Mr Isaacs, who was supposed to be the honest broker for the meeting. When I rang Mr Isaacs' number the answering machine redirected me to Mrs Grusovin and Mr O'Keeffe. How independent and impartial was that?
Even the fliers for today's rally and the questionnaires that were being handed around to and by the borrowers were in Mr O'Keeffe's hand. The real agenda is quite clear. It is not to help borrowers but to cause political mischief for the Government. The honourable member for Kogarah actually agreed with me last week. He called me Sherlock Holmes - for which I thank him - for working that out. I am glad that he conceded that that is the game that is being played. The real agenda is not about borrowers at all. Mr O'Keeffe, the adviser to the honourable member for Heffron, said at the Plumpton meeting - I know this because I have spoken to people who were there - that borrowers should keep this issue on the political agenda because a State election was only 12 months away. How emotive! How fair dinkum is Mr O'Keeffe?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Ashfield to order. I call the honourable member for Coogee to order.
Ms MACHIN: Now the tactic is to bag the advisory service, which has been operating for 23 or 24 days. The funny thing is that anyone who has genuine contact with it, particularly the consumer affairs supervised financial and legal counselling side of it, says what a good job it is doing and how genuine and helpful it is. It is conceded that difficult questions are being asked, but the advisory service is prepared to get back to people. It talks to people time and again. That feedback comes from a wide range of people, including borrowers, but not from the honourable member for Heffron, who still has not sought any information on how that service works, despite my comments in the House last week and despite my writing to her before it was established so we could work out whether it could be improved and what we should do if there were any problems. The silence has been deafening.
It seems that the strategy of the honourable member for Heffron is to starve borrowers of information so they cannot make an informed decision. It was established clearly this morning that borrowers are being lied to and misled by the honourable member for Heffron. I guess her theory is, "She who controls the information controls the people". At this morning's meeting, which went for some time, one borrower said to us that he had been told he was certain to lose his home and the Government could profit from the sale. When one of our counsellors who was present this morning went through the facts with him a very different story was established. Who has been lying to whom?
[
Interruption]
Another Labor lie! Members opposite are pretty good at that. It just goes on and on. The honourable member for Heffron cannot help herself. Just yesterday she quoted from a letter that she had solicited from the Financial Counsellors Association, which states:
In response to your request of 3/3 for information in relation to the role of the association . . . we confirm the following -
Mrs Grusovin: Read the quote.
Ms MACHIN: I will read the quote:
Consumer affairs specifically excluded certain types of training for the counsellors.
I think the honourable member for Heffron quoted a section which said -
Mrs Grusovin: Read the whole letter.
Ms MACHIN: I will table the letter. The letter states:
It was not possible to do financial counselling within the guidelines given to financial advisers - that is, the borrower's overall financial situation was not to be taken into account.
The first part of that letter states:
We were involved in two days' training -
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Heffron to order. I call the honourable member for Coogee to order for the second time.
Ms MACHIN: This is the letter from which the honourable member for Heffron quoted.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Oxley to order.
Ms MACHIN: The letter states:
The areas covered in the training were:
How do people get into financial difficulties?
Changes in the relationships.
Understanding who owns the properties.
I would have thought that was fairly comprehensive.
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Mrs Grusovin: Read it in context.
Ms MACHIN: I read it in the context of a letter from consumer affairs which went to borrowers and stated:
Thank you for agreeing to provide some training. There are some issues we would like you to cover as part of your input including:
(1) The skills that will ensure that the advice that staff provide is based on an independent assessment of each borrower's position.
Mrs Grusovin: How much training did you give them?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Heffron to order for the second time.
Ms MACHIN: The honourable member for Heffron just hates this. At the end of last year there was considerable -
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Riverstone to order.
Ms MACHIN: The honourable member for Heffron just hates to think that this problem might be resolved. That is a really sad reflection on her.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition to order for the second time.
Ms MACHIN: We have established a service that has credibility. Any suggestion to the contrary from the honourable member for Heffron is a real slur on its character. Once again I invite her to see how that service is operating, to give us her suggestions on how it could be improved - as a number of borrowers did this morning - and to tell us exactly what is wrong with it.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the honourable member for Coogee to order for the third time.
Ms MACHIN: The Government can see it, the colleagues of the honourable member for Heffron can see it and the media can see it. The honourable member for Heffron is manipulating this issue.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition to order for the third time.
Ms MACHIN: Most important, as was demonstrated by the small crowd of people who turned up this morning, borrowers can see through the honourable member for Heffron, because they are just not responding any more.