The Internet and the digital economy promise a great deal. Better prices, more choice, faster delivery. Simultaneously, they bring new risks or, more accurately, old risks that are manifest in new ways.
These risks include the potential for lessened competition, and for consumers to find they don’t enjoy the protection at law they anticipated.
This edition of Update reports on both the upside and the downside of the digital economy, and what the ACCC is doing to ensure that the digital economy delivers the benefits it promises and to ensure competition is maximised.
Indeed, ensuring competition, and providing for consumer protection, in the digital economy and in online commerce, are among the ACCC’s compliance and enforcement priorities.
The ACCC has cases before the Courts, which cover key issues in the digital economy. The underlying point of these cases—and the ACCC’s work to raise awareness of businesses’ obligations soas to prevent contraventions of the law—is that consumers should enjoy the same protection in the Australian online economy as they do if they are shopping in a mall in suburban Sydney or Melbourne.
And the benefits of competition—for consumers, suppliers, and for the national economy—should reach their maximum online in the same way as they do elsewhere.
Two other initiatives we report on are in product safety. Earlier this year, the ACCC joined with KidSafe and Energizer to launch an initiative aimed at raising awareness among parents of the risks that very small batteries pose if children swallow them.
And, as winter spreads across the country, the ACCC has set out to remind kids, teenagers, coaches, referees, and parents that moveable soccer goal posts pose a risk where they are not properly anchored. About 40 deaths or serious injuries have been caused worldwide, many by people swinging on poorly‑anchored moveable goal posts. The preventative measures are simple, as the ACCC initiative shows.
Finally, in this edition we welcome the newly‑appointed Deputy Chair, Delia Rickard. Delia joins the ACCC after a successful career as a senior executive at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). At ASIC, Delia built a record of outstanding initiatives in consumer protection in financial services. I am extremely pleased that she has been appointed to the ACCC.
