Consumers believe that regulators are often indifferent to their concerns or at least slow to respond. Regulators think that consumers fail to justify their calls for action or base them on anecdotes.
Everyone thinks that policy should be based on evidence but the threshold required by policy makers from consumers is often unattainable while their own policy interventions appear arbitrary.
What is needed is a good conversation about what standard of evidence will be adequate to support policy developments.
On Wednesday 4 November ACCAN held its Responsive Regulation and Policy Seminar, to cut through this regulatory standoff and work out the path to trigger responsive regulation where it is called for.
We invited consumers to put forward their questions to the seminar panel through the ACCAN web site to make some headway on the issue.
It was a real coup to get representatives from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Australian Securities Commission, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Productivity Commission and Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, together in one room.
For anyone with an interest in being part of public policy discussion it was an opportunity not to be missed.
Regulators themselves would understand whether the market has failed to adequately provide what consumers want and need.
Consumers on the other hand need regulators who are prepared to intervene. They want rigorous complaints handling, enforcement against recalcitrant market participants and to be better informed so they can make their own decisions and choices.
The best form of consumer protection is informed consumers and vigorous competition.
A sector such as telecommunications has a number of escalating complaints which point to the failure of a competitive market systems to deliver value, affordability, and accessibility of service. The industry is just not doing that.
For the industry it is equally important that good quality innovative services should be rewarded by gaining more customers; where regulators are asleep or absent, they fail as well.
Our goal is to have a market where consumer’s demands are decisive in shaping services and standards they get. That is not the case at the moment.
Revision of codes of practice, the Do Not Call Register, shaping of the national broadband network and informed consent, where consumers are unaware of the nature of the obligation they are entering into or that they are entering an obligation, are all issues that are of concern in particular to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and young consumers.
The industry has benefitted from taking into account consumer preferences.
Good quality, innovative services should be rewarded by gaining more customers; where regulators are asleep or absent, the industry loses as well.
Thank you to the consumers who participated in this important conversation by registering their questions to speakers through the ACCAN web site or attending in person on the day. It was a very interesting discussion. You can keep up to date with our progress at
www.accan.org.au
Allan Asher is a former deputy chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). He is now a board member of the United Kingdom Office of Fair Trading and CEO of the consumer watchdog organisation, Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN). During his time at the ACCC he had a direct approach to seeking resolution of both competition and consumer protection issues. He joined Energy Watch from the U.K. Consumers Association where he was Director of Campaigns and Communication and a member of the senior management group. Allan previously worked for Consumers International, which is a global NGO made up of 240 groups from 110 countries. In Australia, Allan is best known as an outstanding consumer advocate and also as having been a tireless worker for the Australian Consumers Association.
