Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Consumer Protection) Bill 2013. This is a good bill, it is a simple bill and it is one that has come into this place following on from some of the very good work that Labor did in government. It is one of those changes and shifts you see in the community through legislation that really has a direct impact on consumers. The more that I think about what this bill does via the Do Not Call Register, the more I see it as a bill to help people who are a little too polite or a little too vulnerable. As we know, a lot of people are preyed upon because of their vulnerability. Sometimes it is older people; sometimes it is younger people; sometimes it is people who are a bit isolated or at home at particular hours; and other people are preyed upon because of their goodwill or just their inability to say no or to perhaps fully comprehend what is being spruiked to them.

It became evident to us, particularly through the good work that some of our backbench members did—in particular, Anna Burke, the former Speaker of this House, when she was a backbencher—that we should look at ways that we can assist and protect consumers. The Do Not Call Register Act became a very important tool in that armoury to help all of those people, and I know it is very widely used. The initiative went further and now there is the Do Not Knock initiative. People may have seen the little stickers you can put on your door—I see people nodding their heads and shaking their heads. It is really effective and it does send a clear message and signal. Particularly with the Do Not Knock initiative, people do have a time which they believe is their time, and we on this side agree. People should be afforded some privacy, particularly around dinner time or at night when perhaps they have had a long day at work and just do not really want to be bothered by somebody selling or spruiking them something at the door.

Even worse and more invasive, though, is what happens from time to time when people call you unwanted. I am sure we have all heard the stories, and they are endless. I could almost speak all day on the scams and things that come through the telephone line, if not the internet. People ring up saying they are from a large technology company and there is something wrong with your computer. If only you do X, Y and Z and give them all your details, they will help you fix it—too bad when you tell them you do not have a computer in the house!

A whole range of very important consumer protection mechanisms are contained in this bill. Even beyond just this bill, consumer awareness and education about protecting yourself is, I think, really important. A lot of the work I did in government in the area around financial literacy was also important in trying to help people arm themselves against people who try to separate them from their money or even them from their time. So it is very important.

We created these new laws in government to protect people, consumers specifically. The bill before us is in three parts and contains some sensible amendments to try to make improvements on what was already in place. We support it because we wrote it. In opposition, it is a good thing to be able to come in here and find a really good bill before the House. It ought to be good because we did a good job in putting it together. It is pretty straightforward. Part 1 of the bill amends the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 to clarify when a person is taken to have caused another person or third party to make telemarketing calls or send marketing faxes in carrying out marketing activities. Part 1 of the bill also amends the Telecommunications Act to streamline and improve the process for developing and amending industry codes under part 6 of the act.

Part 2 of the bill amends the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1995 to do a few things but, particularly, to require that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman scheme, the TIO scheme, comply with standards determined by the minister of the day and also to require that there is a periodic public review of the TIO scheme. That should be done by somebody outside, by an independent person.

Part 3 of the bill amends the Telecommunications Act to insert a reference to the Australian privacy principles as well. So it encompasses all good amendments. As I said earlier on, the Labor Party introduced this legislation in government and we will also be supporting it in opposition, as the shadow minister has said.

These changes will enhance the operational efficiency of the Do Not Call Register. It will also simplify the processes for updating industry codes and will increase the transparency of processes to develop industry codes. It goes further in that it provides some greater clarity around the role of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, its operation standards and processes for regular reviews. We want to ensure that it is very clear how the register works and also very clear how a consumer can access remedies through the office of the ombudsman. It is often very difficult for consumers to deal directly with their service provider, which may not be willing to assist in rectifying certain issues and problems that people might have. So this is an important clarifying point.

As the minister noted in his second reading speech, the various amendments to this bill are not contentious and have the support of industry, regulatory authorities and consumer representatives. So it is supported across all areas, across all stakeholders. The amendments also reflect the continuing importance of consumer protection regulation in telecommunications. It is a pretty messy area of law and if there are not decent, good consumer protection principles and regulations in place, then people can easily get in trouble.

There was an earlier period when it was not possible in Australia to find two mobile phone contracts that you could ever compare. They were deliberately designed to be very confusing, incomparable and incompatible. They made it as difficult as possible for a consumer to discover whether one policy or one contract for a service provider was better value than another contract. We did a lot of work in government to ensure that comparability existed, that contracts were fair and that there were fair clauses within those contracts so that a telecommunications company could not write in there something ridiculous, such as, 'If you take out a two-year contract with a mobile phone, you have to buy the mobile phone all over again for another round,' and things like that. We did some really good things, including providing sensible mechanisms, to ensure that consumers were protected and that there was some accountability and transparency in those types of contracts as well.

The amending legislation is designed to enhance the ability of the regulator and the Australian Communications and Media Authority to enforce the operation of the Do Not Call Register. There is no point in having a register if they cannot enforce it. There is no point in having these things if they do not actually work in practice as well as in principle. We have worked very hard to ensure that they actually work in practice. I still get calls to my office from people complaining, saying: 'I've registered on the Do Not Call Register, but I still get calls.' You have to explain to people that sometimes they are just randomly generated numbers and they may be the unfortunate person receiving that call. But, over time, as more and more people register, it will become clearer to telecommunications and marketing companies that people really do not want to be annoyed in the privacy of their home, particularly at dinner time. There are certain times when we all want a bit of a rest. I think that is important.

This is really good work. Without stretching the telecommunications field too far, obviously, there are a range of things in the legislation that relate to how people work at home and how, these days, their fax machines—if you have still got one—are becoming less and less of an item in business or even at home, as more and more of life is transacted over the internet and how important really good, fast broadband is. And it is good to have the Minister for Communications here at the table. I have not found anyone who does not want a big, fast, cheap, good-value, efficient broadband connection.

You are lucky if you have ADSL2. In fact, very lucky because in most places you cannot get that. And there is this ridiculous circumstance where people go on waiting lists for two years, only to find that they move in the period and they have to re-register, even if they have only moved next door. Or the circumstance where they were living in one street and somebody who had an ADSL broadband connection, maybe their neighbour, is moving somewhere else and says, 'You can have my connection,' and of course that is not possible, either. That highlights the big problem here that our interchanges and nodes are not capable of getting whatever comes to them out to the actual house, to the consumer. That is where, under our policies and under the rolling out of the National Broadband Network, we really saw the big change, the big shift: broadband directly into the home. This was the big pipe. Sometimes people think it is all a bit difficult, confusing and technical; it is not really. Just imagine a big water pipe: the bigger the water pipe, the more water you are going to get. Maybe that is not a good analogy in terms of the home. But the bigger the pipe to the home, the better off you are. If you put in just a little pipe, you will obviously not get a lot down that pipe.

It is very important that we stop the farce in this country—which is holding back business, holding back the economy and holding back people who work from home, which we see more and more of—with this ridiculous notion that, if you take a really big pipe down the street somewhere, that will be good enough. And it is too bad that the majority of ordinary Australians will not be able to either afford to connect or even connect, depending on where they live. So there is a real issue at hand in how we deliver telecommunications right to the individual consumer, just like some of the good things that have been done in this particular bill, in ensuring that consumers are served directly, not just vicariously by some other method.

Obviously, I am very supportive of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Consumer Protection) Code and also the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the regulator and ACMA in terms of all the good work that they do. It is with pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.

See this speech in context