President's comments from April - May 2006 Newsletter

Congratulations to Verity on taking home the Rona Okely Award at the 2006 Consumer Awards Ceremony at the South of Perth Yacht Club on St Patrick’s Day. It was a very relaxing and entertaining evening and an excellent opportunity to catch up and network with consumers from other organisations.

Verity has been interested in consumer rights for a very long time and has obtained permission from the Australian Consumers Association to reprint in our newsletter, the cover of the 1960 first issue of Choice magazine from her extensive collection.

CAWA has had a busy couple of months finalising submissions for the Licensing Boards’ Legislation and the Home Building Contracts Act. Thank you to everyone who contributed. Your ideas for the review of the Builders Registration Act and the new Building Act are most welcome as we are yet to get our teeth into these two pieces of legislation.

We are disappointed at the announcement that Country of Origin Labelling will not be mandatory on food products. We have always supported accountability for the provenance of what we eat. What is the point of having strong regulations within Australia governing food quality when we can import any old thing, particularly with pre-retail testing not guaranteed.

Rhonda travelled to Melbourne to participate in the Third National Consumer Congress from the 15th – 18th March where a complexity of issues were addressed. Her report and others from the Congress may be found at www.consumer.vic.gov.au

The CAWA website is soon to be updated so have a look in a couple of weeks (or so) and there should be some timely changes.

The Australian Direct Marketing Association provide a “Do Not Contact” service. Registration might take 45 days to process but should reduce unsolicited phone calls, direct mail, email and SMS. To register, phone the ADMA consumer information number on 1300 792554 or log on to WWW.adma.com.au" WWW.adma.com.au and go to “consumer help”. By the way, if you have calling number display, don’t you hate answering calls with withheld numbers, generally unwelcome interruptions and not from anyone you actually want to converse with.

During the last four months consumers have seen Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s and Mother’s Days intensively marketed. Hopefully we can now enjoy a nice break before Fathers Day and then Christmas again. Let us know if there is an area of interest that you would like included in the next issue.

Genette Keating

Last modified: 20 April, 2007