By Jo Benvenuti, Executive Officer, Consumer Utilities Advocacy Centre
The UN consumer protection guidelines provide an important basis for consumer advocates the world over in the development of consumer protection policies and principles across the spectrum of consumer interests. Consumers International (CI) was at the forefront of the development of these principles, which were adopted by the UN in 1985 and updated in 1999 to include sustainable consumption and environmental concerns.
A further revision announced by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in July this year, is aimed at updating the guidelines to take account of changes to competition and consumer policy and technology. It is proposed that the guidelines will therefore be expanded to include protections specific to financial services, energy, consumer representation, and access to knowledge. CI is supporting the inclusions and has committed to consulting with its members before developing a submission to UNCTAD. The draft guidelines are expected to be considered in July 2014.
New protections on energy, financial services, consumer representation and access to knowledge are supported by Consumers International.
CI believes that the increasing complexity of these markets, demands that the guidelines be revisited to ensure they incorporate the consumer protections needed for these fast changing services. Some of the themes have wide application to the finance and energy sectors, including universal access, better design of information, mandatory requirements for comprehensibility and representation of consumer interests in governance, regulation and redress. Similarly there is currently no benchmark in the guidelines that deals directly with the impact of the digital age on consumers and in particular, their rights to access knowledge. The Consumer Utilities Advocacy Centre intends to monitor and contribute to the energy component of the new draft guidelines, potentially in conjunction with CFA colleagues from other relevant sectors.
If you haven’t visited the CI website or the Consumer Protection Guidelines in a while, it is a very worthwhile exercise, firstly to consider how substantially this document underpins our everyday policy positions. Secondly the Guidelines are a benchmark against which consumer advocates can assess government performance in relation to consumer affairs, and government obligation and commitment to consumers under these UN conventions.
The General Principle in the Guidelines states:
“Governments should develop or maintain a strong consumer protection policy, taking into account the guidelines …..and relevant international agreements. In so doing, each Government should set its own priorities for the protection of consumers in accordance with the economic, social and environmental circumstances of the country and the needs of its population, bearing in mind the costs and benefits of proposed measures.”
It is disappointing that in light of this, Australia as a wealthy, developed economy, remains uncommitted to ensuring that there is a funding base for the representation of consumers in policy issues at the national level through the Consumers Federation Australia. This is particularly so given that the economic justification for consumer advocacy resourcing has been acknowledged by the Productivity Commission on multiple occasions in its various recent reviews.
http://www.consumersinternational.org/media/33866/consumption_en.pdf