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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-13 Daily Xml
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Gift Cards

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (17:35): I move:

That regulations made under the Fair Trading Act 1987 concerning Gift Cards—General, made on 29 November 2018 and laid on the table of this council on 4 December 2018, be disallowed.

Last year, we passed the Fair Trading (Gift Cards) Amendment Bill 2018 which amended the Fair Trading Act 1987 to require that any gift cards sold in South Australia must have a minimum expiry date of three years. SA-Best, of course, supported the legislation. We now have a set of regulations that underpins that legislation, the Fair Trading (Gift Cards) Regulations 2018. Clause 4 of those regulations provide a number of exceptions to the intent of the legislation, being the prohibition on the sale of gift cards with an expiry date of less than three years. Clause 4(a) and clause 4(b) state:

Section 45D of the Act does not apply in relation to—

(a) an ATM card, charge card, credit card or debit card; or

(b) a reloadable prepaid card;

A prepaid card means a prepaid card that is redeemable for goods and services through an electronic payment system such as EFTPOS Prepaid, Visa Prepaid and Mastercard Prepaid. My concern is that many of these cards are sold through Australia Post, supermarkets and other stores where other gift cards are sold. In fact, they are sold alongside them and provide an alternative gift card to that of a store card such as for Bunnings or Myer, giving consumers more options when buying cards. It is unclear to me why these types of cards have been exempted from the three-year expiry in the legislation, and they appear to undermine the intent of the legislation. For this reason, I have moved the disallowance. I want to advise the chamber that I will be taking this disallowance motion to a vote in two weeks. With those words, I commend the motion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.

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