Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I am grateful to be working with all members of the parliament, particularly the member for Warringah, to shape the program and to ensure that the designated complaints measure works as well as intended. The government will not be supporting the amendment, and I will take a couple of minutes of the House's time to explain why. We do believe strongly in effective evaluation and, indeed, the establishment of the Australian Centre for Evaluation is a marker of the Albanese government's commitment to improving the quality of evaluation. New reviews of frameworks are important, and settling the appropriate timing of those frameworks can be a matter for judgment to ensure that the review takes sufficient account of the way in which the program has rolled out. So there will be a review that takes place in due course.

The member also made a number of comments in her speech, which I think went to important issues as to how the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission responds to complaints from the public. I thought it might assist the House to address some of those questions.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission receives over 400,000 complaints or contacts from the public each year. They go through an extensive triage process, which, according to the most recent data from the ACCC, involved 225 assessments completed, 132 initial investigations completed, 70 in-depth investigations completed and 32 enforcement interventions.

It is worth noting that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission cannot pursue all matters that come to their attention and that in administering the Australian competition law the ACCC works closely with state and territory consumer affairs agencies. It's those consumer affairs agencies that are responsible for enforcing the Australian consumer law, and therefore the role of the ACCC is in determining the appropriate compliance and enforcement actions to be taken. In general, the ACCC looks at its intelligence to inform identification of serious and systemic breaches of the Competition and Consumer Act and the Australian consumer law.

I'm happy to expand on the ACCC's complaints handling mechanisms, if that's useful to honourable members, as the consideration in detail debate unfolds.

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