Happy New Year of the Snake!
In my presentation on 5 December 2024 at the annual Australasian Consumer Law Roundtable, hosted by Deakin U in Melbourne’s CBD, presented an updated version of my 2024 CCLJ article with Prof Souichirou Kozuka comparing consumer law administration, contracts and product safety. I mentioned my Submissions (linked below) to three recent federal Treasury-led public consultations (perhaps prompted by a general election due by May 2025!) into (i) facilitating the Australian government adopting foreign standards for minimum safety of specific goods, (ii) adding civil pecuniary penalties for consumer guarantee remedies not provided by suppliers (including regarding safety, as an aspect of “acceptable quality” for goods), and (iii) a generic unfair commercial practices prohibition. Japanese consumer law has none of these features, but each raises interesting issues.
Relatedly on 6 January 2025, perhaps a slow day for the news (after the excitement of Australia winning a test cricket series against India!), I was quoted in an ABC article focusing specifically on Subscription Traps, whereby suppliers make it easy for consumers to sign up (sometimes including “free trials”) but hard to cancel subscriptions. This led to a 3AW radio morning interview (7-minute recording here) with Tony Jones in Melbourne, where I talked about the trap experienced with The Economist (elaborated in my Submission available here for the first Treasury-led consultation in 2023 on adding a general unfair trading prohibition to the Australian Consumer Law, and in this 21 August 2024 interview with SBS Radio: podcast and transcript here). And then an ABC Radio interview (14-minute recording here) with Lisa Pelligrino in Sydney, where I talked in a spirit of bilateral fairness about the trap experienced more recently with The Japan Times.
Momentum seems to be building for ACL amendments to regulate generally against unfair trading practices, and specific practices such as subscription traps, adding to the chorus of concern expressed also eg at the annual Consumer Law Congress in mid-2024.
