Show me where this operates in the world now so we can get concrete information about how well it works and what it costs.
This is like planning a family holiday. There are many enthusiastic suggestions where to go that would be nice but fewer about how to get there, who is driving, what it will cost in time and how to pay for it. I am not against family holidays but I am against forgetting about ways and means before making a decision.
Before anybody replies “Everything comes down to money these days. You cannot put a dollar value on a human life” it isn’t quite like that.
It has always come down to money. There are many situations already where the costs of running a system in lives and dollars are compared. For example; the medical system, road transport, the building industry, the mining industry. Mostly we ignore these calculations because they are very uncomfortable reading.
I would like to get past the generalisations of the industries saying they can’t afford it and advocates saying they must somehow find a way. I would like to give the proposal support but I need more information.
You have given examples of the operation of policy about specific products or categories. So far policy has been applied piecemeal. It has various degrees of success.
I was asking about examples of the operation of the policy that everything must pass a safety standard, which is the proposal.
Vehicles and pharmaceuticals are two where everything must meet general safety requirements. In these cases, the manufacturer/importer is responsible for ensuring compliance, not the retailer (car dealership or chemist for example).
Electrical products are slightly different where requirements are about electrical safety only. Broadening requirements to any safety aspect has the potential to catch the Thermomixes of the world which met electrical safety requirements, but failed general product safety (burns on users due to design flaws). Any proposed broadening wouldn’t replace current electrical safety requirements which are imposed on manufacturers/importers, but would complement them by having additional and separate general product safety requirements (excluding electrical safety as this is addressed elsewhere).
Legislation is often drafted to exclude matters already covered by existing legislation (e.g. ADRs, TGA requirements, electrical safety and such like). This is done for a number of reasons, such as ensuring similar/same compliance actions don’t occur under different legislation or creating loopholes through inconsistencies. I expect any product safety requirements won’t include existing product safety requirements like those outlined above. These will be exclusions in any legislation.
It is the question of how to efficiently and effectively apply safety rules to all the things that have no existing framework, as they has never been regulated this way before, that troubles me.
Sectors that have been regulated for decades if not centuries will not give us much information about the problems in other industries.
There is also the question of setting up one bill for legislation with a very wide scope or having many bills - one for each industry sector. This is a considerable program being proposed overall.
Surely there is somewhere in the world comparable countries that have greatly increased the scope of such regulation across many industry sectors in the last decade or two that we can learn from - if only what not to do.
It concerns me as well. Any changes need to be effective, like those which currently exist for some products.
I have concerns that any requirements will be too general, or used by the legal profession to take action against manufacturers/importers. An example being say a toothbrush handle breaks easily - someone gets injured when it breaks. The question will be is the toothbrush unsafe and is there a claim against the manufacturer/importer. Or did the handle break due to somewhat excessive force. I can see the courts being bogged down with trivial matters.
Legislation can be drafted to exclude its use for such purposes, but, there will be strong vested interests trying to ensure it does cover such scenarios.
One has to start somewhere. There are products with published and applicable ANZ standards but it is easy to purchase products that do not meet those standards. An example suggests it may need to be implemented piecemeal over time, not ideal but possible and agree any effective broad brush seems unrealistic.
The following review states 12 out of 55 tested products did not meet the ANZ safety standards. Why should they be able to be sold is a reasonable question, accepting some failures were more serious than others but should that matter if they do not get the ‘tick’ of meeting the respective standard? One vendor challenged the Choice test – Choice stood by their results. Choice is an accredited lab for the referenced test.
From my reading so far about the proposed changes, I see that the EU still has some issues with their laws and in 2022 there was a paper produced about their system
In 2023 the UK had a consultation about their product safety laws and the safety reveiw pdf is found at the following link
Guidance for the UK laws can be found at
An article on two particular UK pieces of legislation about product safety (PAS 7100 & PAS 7050, sadly like in Aus the UK Standards are not free to access)
US Standards are hard to pin down, there are a lot of law firm hits when it comes to research on the state of their laws.
A 2020 paper on Australian laws funded by the Fed Government Research Council (CHOICE’s efforts are referenced in the paper)
Canada’s Product Safety Law guide can be found at
and a link to the guidance to the Canadian Safety Pledge
The Safety Pledge that businesses can sign to show their official support of product safety in Japan
Hopefully the above links will help give some idea of what legislation could look like and what may be lacking both here and overseas. I do like the idea of the pledges, particularly if they are like enforceable undertakings. Japan’s Safety Pledge has a expected 5 day response timer for consumer complaints about unsafe items. How long does it take here, and for me it seems that a reasonable time can be seriously exceeded here and seemingly without consequence.
Looking at a couple of the links offered by @grahroll, the onus on safe products is on the manufacturer/importer.
Where retailers get caught is knowingly selling unsafe products. In Australia, an example of this could be retailers who knows about a product recall but continue to sell recalled products.
Common to the various discussions and decisions are commentaries on the complexity of modern supply chains.
In formulating its response the EU (GPSR) recognised every link (business/operator) shares responsibility for ensuring product safety. Resolution included application of the precautionary principle for all stakeholders. Economic operators and online market places are also recognised to have specific product safety obligations.
This supports Australian retail operators and online sellers should not be excluded from regulation to ensure the safety of products they sell to consumers.
There is some complexity on how the EU GPSR sets out to achieve these aims. It’s comprehensive in the principles. Of note it also recognised that standards alone did not assure safe products.
The following principles illustrate a comprehensive approach to ensuring practical outcomes. Importantly there is an emphasis on ensuring traceability for the end user.
As the end user (consumer) makes the purchase agreement directly with the seller/retailer it’s important that business is part of assuring the product is safe. IE assurance of traceability (an unbroken chain) of product offered for sale to reliable evidence of the safety of the product.
It’s not necessarily a question as to whether -
It’s about whether consumers should be able to rely on a business to only sell them a safe product. The alternate proposition that suggests a business is only accountable if knowingly selling a product subject to a recall only meets one part of that need.
Hmm how many makers offshore want to be traced or would cooperate with such a move? It will take quite some effort to follow down branching rabbit holes until a product is declared untraceable. What then? Ban it I suppose.
Until it turns up again under a different name through a different apparent supply chain.
I bet there are many factories overseas that don’t care one little bit where their product goes or what happens to it as long as it goes out the door and they get their money from the head of the supply chain. They have no brand name to protect as their stuff is branded down stream - possibly many different ways.
The objective is admirable - getting it done at a reasonable cost, or at all, is another matter.
This is based on what has been adopted overseas and is a reasonable approach. Being subject of a product recall is only one example of where a business would knowingly sell an unsafe product. Other examples would be products which are banned in Australia (example being vapes under current import/sale restriction laws), damaged in someway which affects product safety, where there has been notification by a manufacturer/importer that the product was unsafe, being sold beyond their useby dates and such like. A retailer should have the responsibility where they knowingly sell such products as not removing them from sale can impact on the health and safety of consumers who continue to buy such products.
As I said above, one shouldn’t expect a retailer to determine if a product is safe of not before placing them on their shelves. They don’t have the experience, capacity nor ability to test every product they sell. If one wishes the retailer to be responsible, one can expect that every product will either increase in price substantially (as the retailer will pass on the costs or determining if a product is safe to the consumer) or many products will cease to be sold (as the retailer can’t afford to determine whether a product is safe or not).
Pushing the responsibility onto the retailer for determining if a produc is safe before it is sold will also disadvantage smaller retailers. Smaller retailers don’t have the resources to determine if every product they sell is safe before it hits the shelves. This means less competition when these small retailer close, again, not in the interest of the consumer.
Pushing the responsibility on the retailer/sell isn’t in the interests of the consumer and won’t stop unsafe products being sold (as indicated earlier where consumers are used as ‘guinea pigs’)
Aside from product safety another aspect is that there are products for sale that are illegal to use, well beyond discussion of DIY vs licensed tradies being required, such as radar detectors. Illegal across the country to use, but easily purchased on-shore and this is their ‘get out of jail’ disclaimer.
These situations could be treated similarly to unsafe products. First hoop - if it is an illegal to use product under any circumstances why is it legal to import and sell them? Similarly if there is a safety standard not met, stop it at the border/importer. Adding a statement to the docs about standards compliance should not be a big impost.
This is historical and included for amusement - an idea of how it once went and could go again. Some may remember products sold locally with the registration. Basically if you want to be in a market you do what you need to and most businesses are reticent to leave any profitable dollar on the table they can put in their pocket.
It’s obvious we urgently need better education about and control over how lithium-ion batteries are used and disposed of. So far this year in NSW: 64 Li-ion battery fires and two deaths. 1,000 such fires nationally since January 2023.
The problem is not faulty batteries, but dodgy chargers and inappropriate disposal.
According to the report, there is no national quality standard or lithium-battery disposal guidelines, potentially contributing to confusion and variation in product safety.
There is also no national database to track incidents.
The same report highlights that Australian Consumer Law does not “contain the full suite of tools needed to effectively regulate specialist products, such as electrical products”.
In 2022, Canberra’s only recycling facility was completely destroyed when batteries that should never have been in mixed recycling ignited.
Incorrect disposal of batteries in household recycling is believed to have caused the fire which destroyed Canberra’s recycling plant on Boxing Day last year, according to an investigation conducted by ACT Fire & Rescue.
