Consumer Affairs Ministers from Australia and New Zealand meet generally twice each year with the most recent meeting being held in Adelaide on 6 July.
The meeting, now known as the Legislative and Governance Forum on Consumer Affairs (CAF) issues a Communiqué at the conclusion of each meeting.
The July Communiqué lists CAF’s objective as being “to provide the best and most consistent protection for Australian and New Zealand consumers through its consideration of consumer affairs and fair trading issues of national significance and, where possible, development of consistent approaches to those issues.”
Key topics covered in the Communiqué included
The Australian Consumer Law … Ministers noted implementation of the Australian Consumer Law including a rapid and targeted response to complaints about the online group buying, a national campaign that saw 38 travelling con-men leave Australia and a national coordinated approach to providing support to travelling consumers affected by airline groundings.
The OECD’s Working Party on Consumer Product Safety will establish a global portal of product recalls from October 2012. The portal will provide Australian consumer agencies and consumers with access to information regarding product safety issues world-wide.
Review of Benchmarks for Industry-based Customer Dispute Resolution Schemes … the Benchmarks will be reviewed by officials “with the oversight of the Commonwealth Consumer Affairs Advisory Council” for ongoing relevance and possible enhancement.
Other Consumer Affairs Issues
Other significant issues discussed included payday lending, food labelling, petrol price board signage, and gift cards (see story here).
Please find the full Communiqué here.