At
https://www.news.com.au/national/br...t/news-story/3ff63d9ba5843e1bda5c5df9af553c41 I read,
“That would make it tougher to get a car loan at a car dealership, or buy a TV on credit at a department store.”
There is not much more damage that I think that politicians can do to TGA, other than making Consumer Leasing illegal, which is unlikely. However, by clamping down on Consumer Financing originators (retailers who flick the deals to providers of Consumer Credit, or Consumer Leases), Government may force some must-have-it-now customers to fall back on the likes of TGA. TGA only works with lease originators in respect of business credit, not Consumer Credit. I am inclined to think there is less scope for Government to interfere in business credit in a meaningful degree.
The most sensible thing to do to bring Consumer Leases in line with regulations now applicable to Consumer Credit is to implement the recommendations made to Treasury in late 2016, or some variant thereof. See
http://kmo.ministers.treasury.gov.au/media-release/105-2016/. This will have little impact on TGA, because it substantially, if not completely, applies the recommendation.
Another thing that Parliament could do is to amend the legislation that currently disallows a Consumer Lease having a purchase option. Whatever, the Legislature was trying to achieve by the current limitation should be able to be achieved by other legislative changes that did not occasion collateral harm.
The thrust of the current class action is that TGA did not have a purchase option, and that was “unfair”. The current law clearly states that a Consumer Lease cannot have such an option, and remain a Consumer Lease, which is why I think the class action has no legal merit. Further, the issue of “unfair contract terms” is itself subject to legislated rules, and if I understand them correctly, all that happens if a contract term is ruled to be unfair, it is voided. This begs the question of how one can void a term that is either not there to be voided, or if a reinforcing term is there (e.g., ownership of the goods remain with TGA), how voiding it occasion an unstated purchase option to spring into existence.
If you wonder why this class-action matter has not been dismissed for the want of merit, the answer is that judges are loath to dismiss cases, because they believe that applicants have a right to access the courts. From the applicants' point of view, they probably hope the defendant will buckle under pressure, and cough up go-away money, as often happens in class actions.
