At the 2024 ACCC National Consumer Congress, the Consumers’ Federation of Australia (CFA) was proud to present our Consumer Advocacy Award for the best consumer advocacy campaign or project of the past year. The nominees this year were all strong contenders:
1. Fair Call, direct regulation for telcos – formed from a coalition of consumer advocates and organisations the Fair Call group campaigns for the direct regulation of telecommunication as an essential service with a mandatory code. With rising cost of living and a telecommunications world that has changed drastically since the voluntary code was written (including with the internet and telephone banking) advocates have been campaigning and collecting case studies for years. Especially in light of the social and financial isolation imposed by disconnections and the measurable lack of assistance telco companies comparatively provide. Recently many advocates took the drastic step last year to boycott the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Code Review.
The campaign for the direct regulation of telcos was conducted by the Fair Call group. The group was represented at the Consumer Advocacy Awards by Eirene Tsolidis Noyce (Consumer Action Law Centre).
2. Designed to Disrupt– this joint and ongoing project between the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety and Flequity Ventures aims to provide a blueprint of service and financial safety for finance and essential service industries. Working from the starting point of raising awareness of victim-survivors and mechanisms that can harm or help them the Designed to Disrupt campaign provides individual organisations, industry, and regulators with recommendations to prevent or disrupt the use of their services and systems for financial abuse and coercive control; putting the onus on industry and regulators to prevent their use as tools for domestic violence. So far Designed to Disrupt has published two discussion papers, one on banking products and one on insurance products
The Designed to Disrupt campaign is conducted by Flequity Ventures and the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety and was represented at the Consumer Advocacy Awards by Rebecca Glenn (CWES founder and CEO) and Catherine Fitzpatrick (Flequity founder and director).
3. Weathering the Storm – the report, Weathering the Storm: Insurance in a changing climate, was the cornerstone of a joint submission to the inquiry into insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims. Compiled from sector interviews and interviews and case studies with a large variety of affected people, Weathering the Storm was impactful both in terms of media pick up and the drafting of legislation, a code of practice, and specifically for putting set definitions for insurance terms back on the table.
The Weathering the Storm report was commissioned by CHOICE in partnership with Climate Council, Financial Counselling Australia, Financial Rights Legal Centre, and the Tenants’ Union of NSW. The report was represented at the Consumer Advocacy Award by Bea Sherwood (CHOICE).
4. Financial Counselling Industry Fund – Over twenty years ago advocates for financial counselling began the call for an industry fund for financial counselling, and were faced with rejection of the idea for many years. Recently, in light of the Financial Services Royal Commission and the Sylvan Review, the Financial Counselling Industry Fund (FCIF) has been launched with enough funding to give over 30,000 more people access to financial counselling at a time where demand exceeds supply to the point of crisis.
This campaign was run by Financial Counselling Australia and associated advocates and was represented at the Consumer Advocacy Awards by longtime campaigner and retired Financial Counselling Australia CEO Fiona Guthrie (now CEO at Way Forward Debt Solutions).
In a repeat of last year the judges could not decide between all of these strong contenders and jointly awarded Designed to Disrupt and Weathering the Storm for their strong and successful consumer advocacy campaigns. Congratulations to all the campaigns and projects.
We look forward to seeing everyone again next year!