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Consumer interest groups want buy now pay later providers to be subject to the same stringent lending laws as conventional credit providers.

The government is looking to regulate buy now pay later (BNPL) products to stop consumers racking up debts they can't pay back and has invited submissions into three reform options recommended by Treasury.

Consumer groups have joined forces to urge the government to adopt the toughest of the three options, which would see BNPL products treated the same way as other credit products.

"We're not asking for anything special - just that buy now, pay later plays by the same rules as everybody else that lends money to consumers, including the obligation to lend safely," CHOICE head Alan Kirkland said.

Consumer groups say the other two options - bolstering the industry's self regulatory code with credit checks, or partially bringing BNPL into the traditional credit laws and introducing more modest lending rules - would not be enough to stop the financial products inflicting harm.

"BNPL is credit, plain and simple, so it needs to be regulated in the same way as other credit products to provide people with adequate safeguards," Financial Counselling Australia chief executive officer Fiona Guthrie said.

Ms Guthrie said financial counsellors were reporting a surge in financial stress caused by the financial products.

"People are having to forgo other essential items in order to pay their BNPL debts," she said.

A RateCity survey found 41 per cent of the BNPL users had ended up in some kind of financial distress from using the platform, including 18 per cent that had missed mortgage repayments or other bills to meet their debt commitments.

Consumer Action Law Centre chief executive officer Gerard Brody said one of the issues with BNPL is that direct debits prioritise repayments over other expenses.

"The practice of providers denying service access to those that fall into arrears can also have perverse impacts, as people respond by prioritising repayments so they don't get kicked off the app."

He said these design features were disguising financial distress as providers could report low rates of default.

Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones flagged the changes to BNPL regulations on Monday.

At the moment, the industry is self regulated via a voluntary code of practice. Several providers have signed up to the code, but many newer players have not.

Mr Jones said credit checks would likely be implemented at a minimum.

"We don't want to see people in the same situation they were in the bad old days of credit cards ... they might have had five, six, seven or eight credit cards," Mr Jones told Nine's Today program

"No one company knew the other one had one, and this person was just simply unable to pay off their debts and they were in a dire credit downward spiral."

Mr Jones said changes should be finalised within a one-year window.

BNPL provider Zip welcomed the proposal to enhance regulations on the industry.

"We have been working with Treasury on options for some time and endorse any changes that give consumers greater confidence when using BNPL products," Zip head of ANZ Cynthia Scott said.

She said the company had already conducted credit and affordability tests, and supported all of the three regulatory options on the table.

However, she told AAP if BNPL products were to be brought under the same laws as credit cards and other traditional credit products, it would be preferable for the laws to recognise BNPL as an alternative form of credit.

© AAP 2022

The Queensland Police Service will be restructured after a report found its "inconsistent" and "inadequate" domestic violence response is leaving victims unprotected, and perpetrators emboldened.

However, Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll will keep her job after the report found "a failure of leadership" has fostered a culture of sexism and racism and misogyny in the QPS.

Judge Deborah Richards' report, handed down on Monday after a three-month Commission of Inquiry, also said the QPS had not trained officers properly or provided enough resources for domestic violence policing.

"The impact can be significant. Negative experiences can leave victim-survivors and their children unprotected and unlikely to seek police assistance again in the future, and perpetrators emboldened," the report said.

"The difficulty is that many do experience a negative response from police and that, overall, police responses continue to be inconsistent and, at times, inadequate."

Judge Richards said the culture of sexism, racism and misogyny is a significant problem within the QPS, and "these are not just a few bad apples".

Bullying, harassment, abuse and even sexual assaults within the force are under-reported, the report said, due to a "culture of fear and silence" among victims and witnesses.

The police complaints and disciplinary system is also "unfairly biased towards the officer facing investigation".

Judge Richards criticised Ms Carroll for her lack of reform to deal with cultural and structural problems since taking the role in 2019.

"It is a failure of the leadership of the organisation that this situation has been allowed to continue over many years unchecked," she wrote.

Judge Richards made 78 recommendations to restructure the police force, including more training, more officers and resources for domestic violence policing, hiring more liaison officers for domestic violence, First Nations and LGBTQI communities.

She also called for a new unit in the Crime and Corruption Commission to probe all police complaints, and for a domestic violence victims' commissioner to review victims' complaints.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the report has "ripped the Band-Aid off", and promised to restructure the police force, supporting all recommendations "in principle".

"These will be nation-leading reforms, nation-leading," she told reporters on Monday.

"The Commission of Inquiry has put a spotlight on some dark places in the QPS and as I said, identified cultural issues going back decades that need to be addressed."

However, Ms Palaszczuk has backed Ms Carroll and her deputy Steve Gollschewski to oversee structural and cultural reform within the QPS.

"This is going to be confronting and it is going to take every ounce of her strength to bring about all of this reform, and I am confident that she is the right person to do it," the premier said.

Ms Carroll said she was committed to reform, and apologised to domestic violence victims who had experienced negative police responses, and QPS staff who had suffered after making internal complaints.

"Knowing that police officers had said and done terrible things is very difficult," Ms Carroll said.

"When I hear them come up it's like someone stabs you in my heart because you don't want to hear anymore."

© AAP 2022

A gunman has killed at least five people and injured 25 others inside a LGBTQI nightspot in the US city of Colorado Springs before being stopped by other clubgoers.

Police identified the suspect as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich and said he used a long rifle.

He was arrested shortly after the attack began and was being treated for injuries, according to officials.

Several of the injured were in critical condition and were being treated at local hospitals, authorities said.

Club Q, described by many as a safe haven for the local LGBTQI community, called the incident a "hate attack" in a statement on Facebook.

The FBI said it was working with law enforcement partners to determine whether a federal response was warranted.

Multiple firearms were found at the venue, including the rifle, Colorado Springs Police Department Chief Adrian Vasquez told a news conference on Sunday.

In a statement condemning the violence, President Joe Biden said Americans cannot and must not tolerate hate.

"We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI people," Biden said.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who in 2018 became the first openly gay man in the country to be elected as a governor, called the shooting a "senseless act of evil".

"I feel that same pit in my stomach that so many of you today do, a feeling sadly all too familiar," Polis said in a video appearance during a vigil held at a local church.

Police said the initial phone call about the shooting came in just before midnight, and the suspect was apprehended within minutes thanks to the quick intervention of law enforcement and the bravery of some patrons.

A spokesman for the city of Colorado Springs said authorities were aware of a 2021 bomb threat involving an individual with the same name and birth date as the suspect, but have not officially confirmed he is one and the same.

The Rocky Mountain state has a grim history of mass violence, including the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School and a 2012 rampage inside a movie theatre in a Denver suburb.

The shooting at Club Q was reminiscent of the 2016 Pulse club massacre when a gunman killed 49 people at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was fatally shot by police.

At the time, it was the worst mass shooting in recent US history until a gunman killed 60 people at a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017.

The shooting in Colorado Springs unfolded as LGBTQI communities and allies around the world prepared to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance on Sunday, an annual recurrence to honour victims of transphobic violence.

Anxiety within many LGBTQI communities in the US has risen amid a divisive political climate and after a string of threats and violent incidents targeting queer people and events in recent months.

© RAW 2022