Page 455 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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in the Trading Post, say, that would be fine. But, at present, they cannot ring up asking you whether you want the ad to go in the Trading Post again or the Canberra Times or the Chronicle or the City News or wherever you might need to run ads for more than just week. I understand that that normally happens for ads within a couple of days only. Things like the Trading Post, for example, are published weekly, as are some of these other papers. Telstra—or other groups—will not be able to ring you up to ask whether you want your ad in next week. They would at the very least have to do it every two weeks, and that is a major change.
Telstra say that is going to have a big effect on bodies such as TransACT, and Canberra residents will be the ones who are disadvantaged simply because nothing can happen for 10 days. Apparently in New South Wales and Victoria there are exemptions which actually allow that to happen. I do note that the Attorney-General sent a letter back to Telstra saying that the provision does not stop people ringing up and saying they would like the ad in again or they would like their old phone contract to continue. The trouble is that people often do not do that, and that is putting the onus on the consumer. Another problem, sadly, these days is that you probably go through telephone call centres and talk to Rajah Singh in Mumbai and it probably takes you 30 minutes. I did put that to the Telstra people, and they agreed that that also could be a problem. I do not think it is a substitute to expect the consumer to actually have to ring up. The consumer may not remember anyway.
Whilst Telstra actually had no problem with what is written in part 5 as far as it goes, they had problems with the effect of how it would operate. They indicated probably a third of all people they would deal with might well have problems. Certainly, that would be logical if you extended it to people who put these ads in on a weekly basis and they might need them to run for another week. The body with whom they place the ads simply will not be able to ring them up and say, “Do you want it in next week?” because there is a 10-day cooling-off period.
Telstra provided various papers to Mr Corbell and me. Basically they are seeking—I will refer to a briefing note they gave to both Mr Corbell and me dated Monday, 3 March—certain exemptions in relation to changes to the Door-to-Door Trading Act proposed by this particular bill. They say that New South Wales and Victoria are the only two states to regulate telemarketing versus door-to-door sales. Both those states have exemptions in place in their fair trading acts and regulations for provision of continuing services during the cooling-off period, contracts for classified advertising, and recontracting and major changes to service. They are asking that these exemptions be extended to the proposed changes to the Door-to-Door Trading Act 1991 currently before the ACT Parliament. They say Telstra is also seeking changes to some aspects of the wording of the bill to ensure inbound calls from call centres in the ACT to customers outside the ACT are not included, which is a jurisdictional issue. They spoke to me at length about that.
I note the time. I would seek for the benefit of members to simply table the five-page document they sent to me, which is basically a briefing note the Attorney-General and I have received. I will just table that for the information of members, and I seek leave to do that.
Leave granted.
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