President's comments from Sept - October 2006 Newsletter

In this issue of Consumer Notes we are showcasing the Australian Consumers Association’s second issue of Choice magazine. In the early days the ACA thought they could only manage one or two publications a year and just look at them now. It may be a while before CAWA reaches Consumers International’s annual budget of US $ 5.5 million but for a very small group whose wheels must turn slowly, we achieve a great deal for the consumers in WA. Apart from DOCEP, who provide us with meeting space, parking, postage and newsletter printing facilities, we are not beholden to anybody so you can be assured there will be little conflict of interest in our organisation.

Since the last newsletter two new Consumer organisations have emerged in WA, largely through the efforts of the Consumer Advisory Council and Chris Fields. The Centre for Advanced Consumer Research at UWA had its inaugural Advisory Board (of which I am a member) meeting on 20th September. The Centre is funded for three years by DOCEP and will offer a new unit in “Advanced Consumer Law” and research in areas such as “Red Tape Reduction”, “Switching Costs” and “E-commerce”. The big launch for this initiative is to be on 22nd November.

The second organisation is the Consumer Advocacy Centre. A
couple of meetings have been held with Chris, Lisa Baker (WACOSS) and Michelle Kosky (Health Consumers Council), Su Mahalingham (Consumer Credit Legal Service) and Gordon Renouf (ACA) to discuss the options. Funding looks good but location and day to day function is still to be finalised. It is a pity that there are now so many small consumer organisations diluting the power of the WA consumer movement and it would be great if a new peak body can be formed (as it was once CAWA’s intention to be).

We have almost completed our answers to the 207 questions in the current Issues Paper on the Builder’s Registration Act as part of the ongoing Building Legislation Review. Thanks are due to Joan, John and Valdene who have committed many long and mostly thankless hours to the task for the benefit of those undertaking the daunting task of employing a builder. Joan, Valdene and I sit as consumer members of the Building Disputes Tribunal and regularly see the heartbreak of home builders whose dreams do not quite become reality.

On 11th September, I attended a meeting with Chris Puplick (from the Federal Privacy Taskforce) at the Health Consumers Council to discuss the proposed new Access Card. They have held 90 public consultation sessions around Australia and were expecting to report to the Minister, Joe Hockey (Human Services) by the end of September. Cards are expected to be issued to 16-18 million people in 2008/09. The card which they say is “not a national ID card” will combine Medicare, Centrelink and the Department of Veterans Affairs cards together with identification data. The card is also able to hold additional information such as health and medication information. Consumers at the meeting felt strongly that they should be able to access the information on the card particularly because the information held by these agencies is often found to be
incorrect or out of date.

The Settlement Agents Supervisory Board has invited us to submit to the Review of the Settlement Agents Scale of Fees before 29th September. Although that date has passed, the SASB do not meet until the 24th October to consider the issue, so if anyone has any thoughts on the subject, contact Joe Ripepi at 9282 0554 or jrepipi@docep.wa.gov.au

Genette Keating

Last modified: 20 April, 2007