Page 3569 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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DRAFT FAIR TRADING BILL
Ministerial Statement and Paper
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services), by leave: I would like to table an exposure draft of the ACT Fair Trading Bill. In so doing, I invite members of the Assembly and the ACT community to consider the Bill and provide their written comments to the Director of Consumer Affairs by 18 October 1991.
The Fair Trading Bill is the first step in the Government's strategy for developing comprehensive and up-to-date fair trading laws for the ACT. The Fair Trading Bill is modelled on and complements the consumer protection provisions of the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act. This approach has been adopted for the fair trading Acts elsewhere in Australia.
The primary purpose of such legislation is to prohibit unfair trading practices, especially those relating to misleading and deceptive conduct. Until the enactment of fair trading legislation by the States and the Northern Territory, ACT consumers enjoyed a wider range of protection, under the Commonwealth consumer protection provisions of the Trade Practices Act, than their counterparts in the States. This was because of the Commonwealth's constitutional power to regulate both companies and individuals in business in the ACT.
This new fair trading legislation has also fulfilled a secondary, but no less important, role. It has allowed each jurisdiction to look at the needs of its own marketplace and tailor its rights and remedies accordingly. This is something that the Trade Practices Act can never do, not even here in the ACT. The Trade Practices Commission concentrates on national and multi-State matters. Consumer protection is but one aspect of the national strategy for maintaining a competitive economy. In fact, States and Territories are expected to look after their own interests. For this reason the Trade Practices Act expressly provides for the concurrent operation of State and Territory laws.
Perhaps the best example of tailoring fair trading legislation to suit the needs of each jurisdiction can be seen in the different definitions of "consumer" in the various fair trading Acts. Some States, including New South Wales and the Northern Territory, have extended the definition of "consumer" to include people buying goods and services for use in their businesses. Contrast this with the limited definition in the Trade Practices Act, the prevailing law here in the ACT. Here a "consumer" is someone who has acquired goods or services which fall into one of two categories: Either goods or services of any kind which cost less than $40,000; or goods or services costing more than $40,000 of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use.
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