Page 2862 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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MR STEVENSON (4.34): I agree with the Bill in principle. One of the major areas of concern, and the Bill addresses it in many clauses, is false advertising. It is unreasonable to ask a consumer to have the awareness to know that when something is said to be of a particular type or quality they should be able to tell that it is not. I think we have to rely on the fair trading of traders in Canberra, and in Australia, to let us know.
One of the major concerns people have at the moment is that they wish to buy Australian made goods, particularly those made by Australian owned companies. There have been a number of programs on the radio and television and articles in the newspapers to show that, though some products have labels on them which state that they are made in Australia, in fact they come in from overseas. I went to David Jones recently when they had a sale on. They had a particular wallet for sale, and I wanted to see where it was made. It took me some two minutes to find out. You had to hold the flap of the wallet and pull it apart right into the corner, using quite a bit of force, and down inside I found "Made in China". Many people would have been misled because there was a label on the wallet, where you could easily see it, that said "Designed in Australia". I asked one of the senior shop staff where it was made. She saw this label and said that it was made in Australia. I then asked a floor supervisor where it was made. She simply did not know; she could not find it.
It is unfortunate that in Australia companies that make their products in Australia do not make it very clear where they are made; and, secondly, that companies that are Australian owned do not make it very clear that they are Australian owned. One example, of course, is Ampol, although not everybody knows that they are predominantly Australian owned. The various aspects of this Bill help people have the facts presented to them. It will be far harder for false advertising to occur.
As has been mentioned earlier, the provisions of this Bill largely come from the Commonwealth Government's trade practices legislation. Comments were made earlier about the Australian Supermarket Institute's code. I support the idea of business accepting voluntary codes. The code is working rather well in supermarkets. If you show that a higher price has been charged than was marked on the shelf, they will give you the product for free. That is a good idea. Voluntary codes would work very well in some industries that involve businesses.
However, I have some concerns with the Bill. A major concern is that it is very difficult to understand. I believe that most business people would not be able to understand the Bill without legal advice. A number of the clauses mention "a person", and say what a person can or cannot do. We find out that "a person" does not mean a person, but a company, an organisation and a person. It would be a good idea to put that in the Bill. The fact that it is in the Interpretation Act is not good enough; the suggestion that many people know this is not good enough. That is one matter that it would be beneficial to include. In general, I feel that many business people would not be able to understand the legislation, and that is not what we are writing legislation for. We should use plain English and simple clauses.
I have presented to members a number of proposed amendments. Some of them simply remove clauses that are duplicated or unnecessary. I ask for support on those clauses. A couple of them are more substantive. I will explain those when the time comes.
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