The annual Consumer Affairs Forum was held today, read the communique (PDF). Topics included consumer guarantees in relation to motor vehicles, unfair contract terms for small business, ticket reselling, financial consumer protection and product safety.
In particular,
Ministers noted that while regulators continue to produce and monitor the need for further
guidance, there are ongoing difficulties for consumers seeking remedies for goods that fail to meet
the consumer guarantees. This is particularly problematic where the failures occur very early in the
product lifespan and consumers either do not receive a remedy, or become ‘trapped’ in cycles of
unsuccessful repairs.
What are your thoughts on this and other challenges discussed in the forum?
The Ministers noted quite a bit in a page and a half, they endorsed a couple of things too. Aside from the Pythonesque formal language it is hard to say if they did anything or would do anything. Maybe if one or two would make a courageous decision this would look less like a transcript of ‘Yes Minister’.
More seriously, does all this have any meaning? Does this august body have any history of getting things done? What?
I would say it reeks of business as usual. Our successive governments have either denied a problem (regardless of topic) or recognized a problem and done nothing concrete to address it. On one side often dogmatic libertarian ideology is the holy grail and on the other business needs the benefit of doubt so as not to be put off side until and unless absolutely necessary with no other way possible.
Couple that with an historic focus on ‘educating’ miscreants be they louts or businesses, and we have a culture where the guilty have expectations of lightly lightly and know they can push the boundaries. Even when it comes to Royal Commissions they expect that after the dust settles they can rearrange some deck chairs and carry on.
It is how our system has worked and all governments seem comfortable with the status quo but have come to realise they are expected to be seen to be doing someone about something or other, beside collecting their pay and attacking their opposites.
In the communique cited my expectation is it will find its way into the archives and pulled out when necessary to show there is concern. Until then, business will be faced with laws and little to no enforcement beyond their need to do the right thing when pressed, so they have some reason to push limits to maximise their profits since they usually have no down side at the end, but do have upside to flaunt the laws.
In fairness, some things government seems to be looking at are phoenix companies (although in limited contexts) but eg I have not noticed words to evolve the draconian trading while insolvent laws, whereby if we had the equivalent of American Chapter 11 bankruptcy a troubled business could have a go at resurrecting itself rather than being put into 3rd party administration where the goals are different, not that the US model is perfect. If we had that option serious penalties could be invoked without destroying a business as would often be the case today. Perhaps I stated it simplistically and did not adequately cover the broad aspects, but ‘it’ is broken and the pollies who own ‘it’ have been comfortable catering to one side and producing theatre for the other.
