Ruby Hutchison Memorial Lecture 2025

Transcript

CATRIONA LOWE:

Good afternoon and welcome to everyone joining us online and in person for the 2025 Ruby Hutchison Memorial Lecture.  I would like to begin by acknowledging that those of us here in Sydney are joining this event from the lands of the Gadigal people, and I'd like to pay my respects to elders past and present. 

Today is National Close the Gap Day, as many of you are doubtless aware, a particularly significant date for Australia's First Nations people and for all Australians with the launch of the annual Close the Gap report, this day highlights the continuing gap in life expectancies, and health outcomes generally, between Australia's Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.  It is also an opportunity for us all to reflect on the actions we can take to improve the welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, close the gap and promote greater togetherness in our society. 

In this spirit of togetherness, I am honoured to introduce to you Uncle Michael West from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council.  To begin our proceedings today with a welcome to country.  Michael's roles have included director of the New South Wales Indigenous Chamber of Commerce and director of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.  Thank you, Michael.  Thank you.

MICHAEL WEST:

Thank you. I'd like to say bujari gamaruwwa, g'day, everyone; how are you?

AUDIENCE:

Good.

MICHAEL WEST:

Good.  We're just having a yarn out there before about people's rights.  Not only the consumer rights but also human rights too.  When you think about closing the gap, we're not really going forward.  We go a little bit forward and then we go back.  An Aboriginal child born today up at RPA, or the other hospitals around Australia, will obviously have less life expectancy than mainstream Australians.  It's important to think about that.  And it's not right in a first world country; we are a rich first world country, and it should be better. 

I see there are a few familiar faces I know here, obviously, and it's great to see them here, all the different people.  And I was saying being out on that beautiful harbour, we've got the most beautiful harbour in the world, haven't we?  And I'm sorry for those who are streaming to us online that you're not here just where – we're on the harbour here, which is great, at the National Maritime Museum.  But we'd also like to send our love and respect to you to the different places around the country and the country that you're on and the communities that you're in, because it's very important to work with the communities that you're in.  I know everyone's very passionate about their communities, as I am, with not only my community but all communities.  I was just having a yarn with the boss from Choice earlier today at the intersection of the queer community and disability community, which are quite marginalised intersections, and that we need to really do things right and build our cities and build our places with less steps, more ramps and more intelligently, is what we need to do. 

And I was going to say being out on that in that beautiful canoe out there, bark canoe, Narwee is what it's called.  And we also have a suburb in Sydney called Narwee, obviously.  And Gadigal here, Cammeraygal – the other side, Cammeray, a suburb named after Cammeraygal, and then obviously out at Parramatta is Burramattagal, Burra meaning eel.  I try to visualise what it's like with the Burra swimming from Burramattagal, the trading place, also and then going to the South Pacific in their journey of migration and then also the whales coming in here.  They do come and visit sometimes.  They got tangled up the last two times, which is not great.  But I saw people actually went out there and helped them, which is so important because the whales would come in to Gomora, just here at Darling Harbour, and they would do that with the little calves for many, many, many millennia.  We've built a bridge there and we've built a Marina so they can't come in here unfortunately, which they would have a memory of for many, many times.  And they do come and visit sometimes.  Our totems are very important.  Whale is the Gadigal totem.  And then there's a whale engraving over at Ball's Head and an engraving of a shark over at Berry Island.  Very important to understand these totems.  And a lot of our totems have actually been killed in the last few years with not caring for country, with the firestorms that we've had, we lost many, many – a billion, I think they said that we lost, which is terrible. 

And then we also have introduced species like carp, and we also have the cane toad, which is obviously – we've had some conversations with some of the other elders from the other places and they say that the cane toad is terrible for crocodiles eating them, also for goannas, also for snakes.  So the different totems are dying because of the terrible introduced species of the cane toad.  There is one beautiful bird that actually has been killing cane toads, which is great.  But it's got a really big job ahead of it, one might say.  Yes, terrible things.  And I remember going up to Queensland with the family every year, and I think people wanted to belt the cane toads with golf clubs and bats.  It was so terrible, the situation up there.  Probably not a nice, kind, respectful way to get rid of them, I think.  But I think Mother Nature, the birds actually have somewhat of a tolerance to their poison, but not a great level of tolerance.  So one of these birds is quite clever, it's worked out how to get rid of the poison out of them.  It's a bird that is not my totem, but I think it's been somewhat marginalised.  It has been dispossessed of its wetlands country.  And it's living all around us in the city here.  Yes, you'll see them everywhere.  They've got the white feathers, black tail feathers, long neck, long beak.  And they've got a bit of a bald patch on the back of their head, you see.  And – the ibis, yes; “Don't call me a bin chicken.  I'm the ibis.  It's not my fault I'm going through the bin.  It's your fault as humans, you haven't cared for my country.  I've had to come and live in the city here with you guys, and I'm just trying to make the most of it.”  Yes, but they're the ones that are killing the cane toads.  They take them down to the water, grab them by their head, shake them, and then they wash them and they shake them and wash them and do that over and over and then get all the poison out.  How clever is that?  Yes, very clever.  And also the crows, they're attacking cane toads.  They turn them over and have learnt which parts to eat and which parts to not.  So Mother Nature is very, very clever. 

When I look on TV, I'm wondering if how clever we are sometimes.  Yes, we're supposed to be the intelligent species, but are we?  We're not really caring for each other around this world.  We could be doing a lot better.  It makes me very sad when I watch the TV at night and I see the news and that.  And we really need to learn to have a conversation, all the different conversations, get past that and to respect each other in these conversations is what we need to do.  It's important we take a moment of silence to pay respects to our ancestors, pay respects to Mother Earth, pay respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and traditional elders and custodians of past and present.  Pay respects to all the elders of the different communities and cultures and identities.  We were just talking about the 78ers, the elders of the queer community.  They experienced – I was thinking, when I talked to them, I said, “You’ve experienced what it's like being an Aboriginal person; you had the first Mardi Gras, you got belted by the cops, you got arrested, you got – and you got locked up and – and you got handcuffed.”  So we've had a similar journey, which is important to remember these things.  And when the minorities come together, we're the majority, we need to think that, from all the different communities.  So if we just have a moment of silence, a moment of reflection, paying respect, centring ourselves and thinking about the point we are in the continuum right now. 

Here where we are in Sydney, we have three aquatic boundaries.  We have the Hawkesbury to the north, we have the Georges to the south and the Nepean to the west.  These are the aquatic boundaries of the Eora nation here.  On behalf of Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, we'd like to welcome everyone here to the National Maritime Museum.  And we'd also, as I said, give a shout out to all the wonderful places we're streaming and will watch this and ask them to connect with the community and to share the stories.  Because once you become an Australian, whether born or naturalised, you have a responsibility to look after our culture and sites.  But we want you to maintain your culture and language and obviously your food and all the different parts of that, the art and everything, because I love talking to all the different cultures and learning about them, but also reflecting on myself and my culture and the differences and what we have in common.  So our elders and our members wish everyone a great time here tonight.  I'm sure the lecture is going to be great.  It's important we have advocates who are strong and, like, smashing down barriers, I think, and standing up for people's rights.  And that's what it's all about tonight.  And also I was going to say it always was and always will be Aboriginal land, never ceded.  And it's important that the times we live in are somewhat dystopian, one might think.  They're also Orwellian when you think of the things, and it's also crazy times, one might say.  Just to say, but look, try and have a bit of a laugh every day and try not to go to bed angry.  I know it can be a bit difficult with what's going on in the world, but try and resolve things.  And I was going to say, look who has pets and loves them?  I do.  Well, there's no one in the world eating them.  There's no one here eating them.  Unfortunately, people say crazy things like that and it upsets and it creates unfortunate stuff, like in Ohio and stuff like that.  It's not right.  We really need to be better than that.  And we'll see where the world goes.  I'll let you think about that.  We can always do better.  And we need a bit more love in the world and respect.  Thanks.

CATRIONA LOWE:

Thank you, Uncle Michael, for welcoming us with such thought and also humour and really powerful reminders of the importance of caring not just for country but for each other as well.  And I think we will be picking up a number of those themes in the discussion tonight.  So thank you.  And even as a person coming into Sydney from Naarm, formerly known as Melbourne, I have to concede that this is perhaps the most beautiful harbour in the world.  I'd also like to acknowledge a few others who are with us here today, either in person or online.  Firstly, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, Chair of the ACCC, and my fellow Commissioners Ashley de Silva, CEO of Choice, who I will introduce formally in a moment.  I'd also like to acknowledge peers and colleagues from the consumer movement, dispute resolution bodies and fellow regulators who are joining us here tonight, especially our international guests.  I believe we are quite fortunate to have a significant cohort of attendees from New Zealand joining us this year, thanks to our special guest speaker.  Thank you very much for coming.  We've also come to learn, though, that this event is something of a tradition not just here in Australia but also in New Zealand, which was a very lovely thing to learn, and we shout out in particular to our friends and colleagues at the New Zealand Commerce Commission, Jon and Vanessa and others; welcome virtually to our event tonight.  Finally, I'd also like to particularly acknowledge members of the Hutchison family who are with us here tonight.  Mrs Mavis Pirola, OAM, Ruby's granddaughter, and Professor Romano or Ron Pirola, OAM, Mavis's wife [sic], and also Christina Pirola, who I believe is joining us online.  We are honoured to have you here again and we hope you enjoy the event very much. 

A couple of items of housekeeping.  In terms of the running of the event, I will shortly, as noted, introduce Ashley who will then introduce Jon.  After Jon's speech, there will be an opportunity for you to participate by asking questions.  If you're joining us online, you can submit those questions via Zoom.  For those of you here in the room, there will be a roving microphone.  After the Q&A session, we will invite everyone here in person to join us in the Tasman Light Gallery just outside the theatre for light refreshments.  That is, back out the door you came in basically. 

Turning now to the purpose of being here tonight.  No doubt everyone in this room is familiar with the namesake of this event, Ruby Hutchison, who was, amongst many other things, the founder of the Australian Consumers Association, now known as Choice.  Ruby had a long and impressive list of important causes for which she was a tenacious and effective champion.  Ruby was an early advocate for consumer rights and the rights of Indigenous Australians.  She was also an outspoken champion for gender equality and women's representation in Parliament, electoral reform and full adult suffrage, as well as housing, health services and education for all.  The impact of Ruby's work and advocacy is well worth commemorating, and for the past 15 years now, the ACCC has collaborated with Choice to host this event in March to honour Ruby's legacy and to celebrate World Consumer Rights Day. 

This year, the theme of World Consumer Rights Day is 'A Just Transition to Sustainable Lifestyles'.  With the threat and increasingly visible impacts of climate change on people and economies, biodiversity loss and pollution, environmental sustainability is a clear and urgent imperative.  But it would be fair to say that environmental sustainability was not on the long list of things that Ruby advocated for during her parliamentary career in the 1950s.  However, we know Ruby was a woman ahead of her time and I would argue she recognised the importance of sustainability even then.  She was also – for instance, Ruby fought to have Kings Park in Perth protected against development, noting that a growing city requires breathing spaces.  She was also a proponent of expanding national parks to preserve Western Australia's unique flora, something she was very passionate about.  Addressing Parliament in 1958, Ruby said, “We have opportunities to display wildflowers in Western Australia because it is a young state with vast portions of it not yet used.  If we thought in a progressive way and with more civic pride, and with less idea of grabbing land for economic development, we would realise that there were other ways of preserving the wealth and attractions of the state.”  I would argue Ruby recognised that beyond preserving our natural world, there was also economic opportunity to be found in pursuing sustainability.  As I said, a woman ahead of her time. 

Today when we speak about sustainability, we're not limited to environmental concerns.  Indeed, since 2015, the UN has championed sustainability as the key to addressing a broad range of social, economic and environmental issues.  Many of the UN's sustainability development goals align with Ruby's long list of causes; no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education and reduced inequalities.  The UN defines sustainable development as the way we must live today if we want a better tomorrow, and I am confident that Ruby would support this goal were she here with us today. 

As I mentioned, the ACCC collaborates with Choice to host this lecture in honour of Ruby each year, and it is my privilege now to introduce Choice CEO, Ashley de Silva, to say a few words before our guest speaker takes the stage.  Ashley has a background in digital innovation and advocacy, and he began his role as CEO of Choice around about this time in March last year, where he leads a dedicated team of advocates for fair, safe and just markets for all consumers in Australia.  Thank you, Ashley.

ASHLEY DE SILVA:  

Thanks, Catriona.  And thank you to Uncle Michael for the welcome.  As Catriona mentioned, this is an annual event that honours one of the founders of Choice and one of the pioneers of Australia's consumer advocacy movement.  And, like Catriona, I do just want to pay my acknowledgement to Ruby's family.  Her granddaughter Mavis and her husband Ron, and thank them both for joining us tonight.  I hope it gives you both real pleasure to see not only is the organisation still standing strong, but still doing great work for consumers all these decades later. 

Ruby Hutchison was a member of the Western Australian Parliament from 1954 to 1971, and the first woman elected to the state's upper house.  She was fearless and forthright.  She was a teller of blunt truths and a pusher of hard causes.  That became part of her reputation, and it didn't make her universally popular.  We like to think of our Parliament as being a much more gentle place back then half a century ago, but Ruby Hutchinson rarely got through a speech without being interrupted.  Take this example in 1955, in a debate about egg prices, a male MP heckled, “I think you'd better stick to housekeeping.” And five years on, a government MP questioned her knowledge of a particular matter, and she replied, “I was well in the fight in connection with that.” And you can almost hear even 65 years later, the frustration in the government member's reply, “You're in every fight.” Later in that same debate, you see the early knockings of what became Choice.  Ruby talks about a consumer research group that had recently formed, which she describes as, “An absolutely non-political movement made up of university men and scientists.” There have been plenty of times since then like it has felt that the consumer advocates were in every fight, and in those early years, there was some criticism.  One newspaper said it was doubtful if a body of amateurs could successfully and in a completely unbiased way, adjudicate on such matters of high business principles.  Well, consumer advocates like Ruby Hutchison believed they could.  And they did.  And so did our friends in New Zealand, who established their own consumer service in 1959, which is the exact year that Choice was established as well. 

Besides being founded in the same year as Choice, Consumer NZ has something else in common, and that's that they were both overnight successes.  So in the first year, both organisations had 10,000 members, which is an incredibly staggering figure, but I think there's a pretty simple explanation as to why; then, as now, consumers wanted an advocate.  They needed somewhere to go for information that they could trust. 

Looking through old debates, you could see Ruby Hutchinson winning the fight in real-time.  You can see more and more consumer issues finding their way onto the floor of Parliament, forcing their way into political debate.  But you can also see the start of battles that would carry on for decades.  Ruby Hutchinson was talking around about grocery prices in the 1950s, and we are still talking about that today, both here and in New Zealand.  She was talking about market power and trading practices that were unfair and arrangements that allowed people to get something now and pay for it later.  Then there are the things like sustainability that almost nobody was talking about in the 50s and which we are very much talking about today.  And that perhaps is the biggest thing that consumer advocates in Australia and New Zealand and all around the world have in common; we make progress, we win improvements for consumers, but our work is never done. 

So having talked about the past and the present, I'm delighted to introduce tonight's speaker, Jon Duffy, Chief Executive of Consumer NZ, to talk about some of the challenges of the future.  Jon became CEO of Consumer NZ in April 2020 – great time to start a new role, Jon – and since then, has driven a staunch and robust pro-consumer agenda, a lot of it on issues like aviation, supermarkets and scams that we're also grappling with here in Australia.  As you're about to find out, Jon is a great way of distilling complex issues into simple concepts, a skilled skill no doubt further honed during his time co-hosting 'Consume This,’ the fantastic Consumer New Zealand podcast.  He spent a lot of time thinking about what faces the consumer movement now and in the years ahead, and how sustainability fits into our work.  And I'm so glad he's agreed to share some of that thinking with us tonight.  Welcome, Jon.

JON DUFFY: 

Kia ora koutou.  Good evening.  I'm truly humbled to be invited along to present this lecture to you tonight.  And thank you so much, Ash, for those very kind words of introduction.  I hope I can live up to them.  This was always going to be a gamble as to whether I could keep my glasses on and read my notes or whether I had to take them off.  And I think it is the latter. 

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land we're meeting on today, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.  I pay my respects to them and their cultures, to their elders, past and present and future, and I acknowledge their continuing connection to the land, sea and community.  I'd also like to acknowledge and welcome any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are attending today's event. 

As I said, it's a genuine honour to be invited to present this lecture, and I'd also love to just acknowledge the staff of Choice and the ACCC who have taken such wonderful care of me, getting me here, providing me with all the information I needed to know and making this such a wonderful event to be part of.  So thank you very much.  I'll say that now before I ruin it all with what I'm about to say. 

Why don't we start by just stopping and pinching ourselves and reflecting on the fact that it's only mid-March?  So much has already happened in this calendar year that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's October, or indeed, a parallel universe. 

Consumers sit at the heart of a whirlwind of issues, some, they’re every day and relatable like the price of cheese at the supermarket, the others are distant and for many they're really hard to put into context, like the macro-economic impact of tariffs on international trade and investments.  And with so much happening and so much information about so many things bombarding our inboxes and our phones, it can be a challenge to know what to actually care about and where to focus energy.  And I think it's reasonable for consumers to prioritise immediate needs and leave the bigger stuff at a distance.  And for most people, this means cheese, not Trump.  And I know that's what I choose. 

This event, as we heard before, takes place around World Consumer Rights Day, the theme of which is 'A Just Transition to Sustainable Lifestyles'.  And it may sound slightly self-serving, but given the complexity that consumers face in today's messy, complicated and rapidly changing world, there's more need than ever, in my opinion, for independent consumer advocacy to represent their interests or their voice simply won't be heard.

 I see the role of consumer advocates like my organisation, like Choice here in Australia, and actually many others here in Australia, to help focus energy.  In preparing tonight's address, I've tried to consider where energy is best focused, the topics that most benefit from me calling them out and asking this audience to reflect on them.  It was not easy choosing because there are so many. 

I've tried to keep them relevant to both Australia and New Zealand, but I'll be frank with you, there are some unavoidable Kiwi quirks that you're just going to have to ride along with, I'm sorry.  I'll try and keep them entertaining.  But you'll be familiar with all of them because everyone here is a person in the economy, a consumer. 

At the outset, I think it's really important to acknowledge that the word consumer does a poor job of conveying the human aspect of consumption, and perhaps this is intentional.  The terms consumer and consumption are economic terms.  They create a space and roles for consumers as units of economic activity, which is in many ways dehumanising.  The deep entrenchment of these terms in the lexicon of our daily lives is undeniable.  The idea that we are consumers and that we consume is barely given a second thought.  Indeed, it's so accepted as a positive idea that my organisation is called Consumer. 

However, as the modern world throws challenges at us that increasingly, it seems, traditional economic models are ill-equipped to deal with and indeed continue to worsen in some instances, we should reflect on whether identifying ourselves in these terms is in fact helpful.  It's self-evident, of course, that consumers are people.  And it's also true that people are messy but organised.  They're inconsistent yet predictable.  On one hand, self-serving and on the other, generous.  They're rational and illogical.  People are subject to manipulation.  People suffer when information is poor, and sometimes people make bad decisions even when they're presented with good information and better alternatives. 

People aren't even square pegs in round holes.  People are odd and randomly shaped pegs that often don't fit in the holes intended for them, and nor should they.  We should recognise that, it's what makes us human; let's celebrate it before the algorithms take over completely. 

What I'd like to do tonight is use examples to highlight three themes where the odd and random shapes that people take means they're being squeezed by the uniform holes that are economic structures and insist they fit within. 

And those themes are firstly, the impact of information asymmetries on people and the planet, the difference between what marketers know and what they tell us. 

Secondly, how vulnerability doesn't fit the model in a modern economy, when vulnerability is defined as people struggling with or at risk of struggling to pay for goods or services, and those who rely on a service for their well-being, a good or a service for their well-being. 

And thirdly, when we consider a just transition to sustainable lifestyles and other major challenges facing society, the fact that markets alone cannot be left to determine outcomes for people. 

To help explore these themes, I'd like to take you on a journey, and – could we change the slide? – on a journey through the west coast of New Zealand's South Island.  It's a wild and astonishingly beautiful place for those who are familiar with it.  You'll know it has a frontier vibe.  The people, for the most part, are self-reliant and suspicious of outsiders, especially bureaucrats from Wellington or suits from Auckland, and, in particular, Australians.  It rains most of the time there, leaving the alpine foothills regularly shrouded in mist and giving the land a mystic quality but also making it difficult to ever feel like you're truly dried through. 

The colonial history of the West Coast is the history of mineral extraction.  Rich in gold and coal, the region saw some of the earliest large-scale industry in the new colony.  Mines brought settlers and the railway and eventually, in the late 19th century, the settlement of Reefton became the first town in New Zealand to have a municipal power supply.  Reefton's current official website describes this achievement as follows, “In August 1888, Reefton became the first place in New Zealand and the Southern Hemisphere to have a public supply of electricity, even before the fashionable suburbs of London and New York,”  – feel that burn, London and New York – and actually the entire Southern Hemisphere, which also includes Australia.  Just saying. 

Reefton was literally first to bring power to the people.  And just down the road in Greymouth, the first recorded example of people power in a consumer context in New Zealand took place.  You'll be surprised to learn that that action centred around beer. 

In 1947, Greymouth had 21 pubs for a population of 9,000 people.  In 1939, the government had introduced price controls, and the price of beer had been set at 6 pence an ounce, rising to seven pence two years later, everywhere in New Zealand, except for the West Coast. 

Rolled around 1947, the war was over, and hotelkeepers in Greymouth wanted to bring their prices in line with the rest of the country.  Their industry body announced that the price of beer would be raised from 6 pence to seven pence in all hotels on the West Coast.  The beer drinkers were not happy.  Public meetings were held through the trade unions, and consumer energy was focused.  A boycott was decided on.  The publicans tried to maintain a united front, but one publican, Paddy Keating of the Central Hotel in Greymouth, kept his prices at 6 pence while the boycott emptied pubs across the town.  That was not the case for Paddy Keating.  He had crowds spilling onto the street and quickly ran out of beer until a local citizen stepped in and donated a 36-gallon keg of beer to tide them over; what a good bloke.  After four and a half months, the owners caved in.  The hotel owners caved in and issued a statement saying that pubs could choose to sell beer for 6 pence or even 7 pence, either price.  And by the 13th, the Greymouth Evening Star reported that all beer was being sold for 6 pence.  This is consumer power in action on the Wild West Coast. 

It makes you think if we could focus the energy of enough consumers, if we could convince enough people to be willing to risk going without beer or sneakers or air fryers or Instagram or whatever it is that marketers have convinced us that we need to live a full and rewarding life, could we address some of the power imbalances between consumers and businesses, those businesses that make and sell what we consume? 

I think the answer is yes.  But as with everything in life, it's not that simple.  We are consumers in a global system.  It's one thing to get all the beer drinkers in 1947 Greymouth together to boycott the hotels.  It's quite another to unite everyone who buys problematic fast fashion, tuna or products containing palm oil in this opaque global supply chain, getting them together to understand the impact of what they're buying and then uniting behind a boycott until an industry improves.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

Back to Reefton with its world-beating public supply of electricity.  Remember that big finger Reefton’s website is sticking to London and New York?  Unfortunately for Reefton, things change with time.  I'm told London and New York have done quite well for themselves since 1888, while Reefton and the wider region's early successes have not proven lasting economically and environmentally.  The West Coast has not had the rub of the green in recent times. 

Mining, the mainstay of the coast's economy, has declined, as it seems destroying the natural environment to dig up fossil fuels is not as popular as it used to be, although our current government seems interested in changing this.  Towns built on river mouths next to the ever-rising Tasman Sea are prone to more regular flooding, making life risky and insurance coverage an increasing challenge.  Power is expensive and gets more so the further you move from the main centres, making winter heating less of a necessity and more of a luxury for some residents. 

From a strong start in the 1880s, Reefton's current population is just 970 hardy souls.  The town has seen many changes over the years, and this theme of transition is woven through the examples I'm going to give you today.  As is the idea that the system, that is the economics and the behavioural norms that act as seemingly inescapable forces on our lives, are holding us back from truly adapting to the challenges that face us. From how we power and insure our homes, to how businesses convince us that their products are better, faster or more sustainable than their competitors.  The forces brought to bear on the consumer are often invisible but always formidable. 

All right, let's start with information asymmetries; the difference between what marketers know and what they tell us.  And we'll start with a shameless plug, because I've been a bit negative about the economic and environmental prospects of the West Coast.  It's quite nice in New Zealand.  There's heaps of green and lots of birds.  It doesn't take you long, even in our biggest cities, to get out of the concrete jungle and into the native bush.  The Great Walks and national parks are spectacular.  But of course, you know this as an Australian audience because you've all sat through nine hours of The Lord of the Rings and a further nine hours of The Hobbit Extended Director's Edition, as well as being bombarded by Tourism New Zealand advertising promoting the cleanliness and the greenness of our fair land.  And you respond to it.  Australia is the biggest source of international tourism New Zealand has.  You're clearly fans, and why wouldn't you be?  The advertising is compelling. 

It's not lost on New Zealanders how important our clean green image is.  It attracts tourists, it grows the economy, and it doesn't get cleaner or greener than the West Coast.  As I noted earlier, the natural landscape is something to behold.  Sure, the glaciers are retreating at an ever-increasing pace, and climate change and sea level rise are causing more regular and more devastating flooding in coastal areas.  But there's still enough green to make it well worth the visit.

Our research shows that there's a really interesting interplay between people's needs and their desire to protect the environment.  For most people, affordability trumps all other considerations.  This means that while people still care about environmental issues when times are tough, they prioritise putting food on the table and paying the rent and power over making what they perceive to be ethical or sustainable purchasing decisions. 

However, when they can afford it, our research also shows that 90% of people will seek out and respond to sustainability claims, prioritising ethical and sustainable purchasing.  This makes intuitive sense; if you can buy the type of thing that you want and avoid contributing to the end of the world, those are two very strong incentives to choose the green brand over the standard one.  It's a real win-win.  But the desire to do the right thing also makes us vulnerable to manipulation. 

While people are willing to switch to more sustainable products, our research shows that nearly half of consumers find it difficult to tell the truthfulness of a product's environmental or green claims.  Marketers know this well and have been exploiting it for years, to the extent that the market is now awash with claims positioning products as sustainable.  Many of these claims cannot be substantiated, a practice commonly referred to as greenwashing.

Problematic green claims sit on a continuum from vague or nebulous claims to blatantly misleading and everything in between.  Vague claims like, 'Inspired by Nature' or the signal that using brown cardboard packaging seems may not be overtly misleading; after all, isn't everything inspired by nature in some way or other?  But those products may also have no greater environmental benefit than the product that sits next to them on the supermarket shelf in standard packaging and making no claims.  Unless they're called out, these claims have the potential to undermine consumer decision-making. 

Consumers are busy in the supermarket as we shop, or as we shop online, we react to signals and cues to help us decide.  Greenwashing sends a false signal about a product that is harmful in a number of ways. 

Firstly, well, it's just dishonest, how dishonest sits on the continuum I noted before, from subtle through to blatantly false.  Consumers have very little ability themselves to test the veracity of claims.  They just have to believe in what's being sold on the packaging.  Indeed, even our investigators who specialise in debunking green claims struggle at times, spending hours looking into claims and corresponding with experts and the businesses making those claims to work out the truth. 

Secondly, products making a green claim often combine that with a green premium, so shoppers end up paying more based on a false or misleading claim.  This is inefficient as it rewards firms for dishonest conduct. 

And thirdly, greenwashing undermines genuine efforts by firms to produce their products or services sustainably.  This undermines competition, trust in the marketplace, and disincentivises efforts to protect the environment. 

In case recent political signals have confused the picture, the scientific evidence supports the idea that we are in a climate crisis of our own making.  So all of these greenwashing impacts are very bad things. 

Research on the size of the problem in New Zealand is comparatively limited, but multi-industry studies have been undertaken here in Australia, the EU, and the UK, and these have all found that between 40 and 57% of environmental claims are false.  With all these detriments in play, the potential scale of the problem, and given the fact that the planet is literally on fire, you'd expect regulators to be all over greenwashing. 

In New Zealand, our regulator has previously listed greenwashing as a strategic priority.  But so far, its efforts have mainly focused on educating businesses through guidelines rather than enforcement action. 

To be blunt, these efforts are not working, and in my view, the situation has spiralled out of control, leaving consumers at the mercy of marketers and information asymmetries, but also leaving no clear line in the sand for responsible businesses to look to gauge what's okay and what's not. 

Unfortunately for consumers and the planet, for the same reasons, it's difficult for the average shopper to detect whether a claim is a greenwash, regulators have been hesitant to take enforcement action, at least in New Zealand, on the grounds that it will be too difficult to satisfy courts that a claim is misleading. 

The problem is compounded by the fact that sometimes regulators can default to relying on complaints from the public to gauge the scale of a problem, rather than proactive monitoring.  This can create a false picture of the size of the problem because, as we noted, except in the most blatant cases, consumers have limited ability to detect greenwashing on their own.  So the flow of complaints may be limited. 

Other jurisdictions, such as the EU, recognise these detriments and are dealing with greenwashing by introducing bespoke greenwashing regulations, banning specific phrases, and increasing penalties.  We agree with toughening regulations, but recognise that banning specific terms can spark a cycle of whack-a-mole with marketers that the law is too slow to respond to.  Ultimately, in most jurisdictions, fair trading laws are already fit for purpose for dealing with misleading claims, they just need to be used. 

Regulators need the courage to draw a line in the sand and take some hard cases, knowing that even if they lose, at least they will have clarified the law and provided more certainty for businesses and consumers. 

In the absence of regulatory action on what we think is one of the most blatant cases of greenwashing in recent years in New Zealand, Consumer NZ is currently involved in litigation against a major domestic fuel brand owned by a parent company here in Australia. 

We're seeking declarations from our High Court that, among other things, representations that the defendant was in the business of getting out of the petrol business, were misleading and created the impression that the company was taking positive steps to reduce its presence in the petrol business when, in fact, at the time it was making those representations, it was selling increasing amounts of fuel and thereby growing its emissions.  To put this in context, the company in question is New Zealand's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter. 

Here's an example of what we allege are misleading claims that send a signal to people that normal consumption can persist because of a perception that they're supporting a company actively seeking to reduce its emissions and lead in the response to climate change. 

We allege that through that campaign, that company capitalised on New Zealanders' concerns about the climate crisis for commercial gain.  A classic greenwash.  Remember, our research shows that 90% of people will switch brands to what they see as a more sustainable choice if they're able to. 

You may quite rightly point out that we're talking about petrol products here, an inherently environmentally damaging product.  And that's actually what makes the alleged greenwashing so audacious and effective.  Our research has also showed that a quarter of people agree that the fuel brand in question was making genuine efforts to operate in a more sustainable way, and that surpassed the results for all other fuel retailers in the New Zealand market. 

Just like consumers themselves, as an NGO, we're not resourced to take on the resources of a multinational petroleum company.  However, we've combined forces with two other NGOs, the Environmental Law Initiative and Lawyers for Climate Action New Zealand, to pool resources and take the case.  It's an important example of the need for independent consumer advocacy. 

We're hoping the case provides precedent that puts consumers and environmental protection over commercial interests, provides clarity for businesses around what types of claims are misleading, and encourages regulators to take more cases and start the process of cleaning up the market so consumers can begin to build trust in what they're being told.  The case has been underway since late 2023, and it's likely to continue for a number of years before we have an outcome.  But it's important we stay the course. 

In the second of the three themes I'd like to explore tonight, I'd like to look at vulnerability and specifically how vulnerable consumers are the most irregularly shaped of the pegs I referred to earlier.  They don't fit the holes intended for them, but they're the most important to ensure we make space for. 

Back to Reefton; the New Zealand electricity market has changed a lot since that first small-scale hydro plant was built in Reefton.  For those unfamiliar with it, the modern New Zealand electricity market can look a bit like Frankenstein's monster. 

With blind faith in the merits of neoliberalism, 30 odd years ago, New Zealand folded the energy sector into its grand deregulation experiment.  The impacts of which we're still experiencing today, both good and bad.  It wasn't complete privatisation; we hedged our bets by privatising generation and retail, subjecting distribution to economic regulation, and maintaining state ownership and operation of transmission.  And if you didn't get all of that, that's perfectly forgivable; I'm actually quite surprised I understand it myself. 

To complicate matters further, the government maintained majority shareholdings in most of the generator-retailers, which make up 80 odd percent of the retail market.  Notwithstanding the government shareholding, these gen-tailers are run like businesses.  As businesses, they face limited competition from each other or new entrants due to the high barriers to entry and expansion.  The gen-tailers' market shares have barely changed in a decade. 

However, power prices in 2025 are at least 30% higher than they were 30 years ago when the market was created.  According to some commentators, high prices are an important feature of the system rather than a bug. 

Since 2019, forward electricity prices have been significantly above the estimated cost of building new generation.  A function of demand outstripping supply, which is meant to signal to incumbents or new entrants that it's time to expand by entering or building new generation. 

In practice, the incentives originally intended to balance the system actually achieved the opposite and get in the way of consumer welfare.  Yet we persist with the existing market design as if it were sacrosanct and wasn't something we just thought up 30 years ago. 

In a few days, a series of increases to residential power prices will roll out across New Zealand.  Advance notices are starting to roll in, suggesting that the average increase for residential consumers is looking to be north of 10%.  This is significant for an essential service and a stubborn cost of living crisis.  And, as we head into winter, there are a number of reasons prices are high and increasing.  But a significant contributor is the need for generators and retailers to return a profit. 

When confronted with their public messaging, it can be difficult at times to know who publicly listed companies are working for.  They say it's their customers.  And indeed, if it wasn't for customers, they wouldn't have a business.  But the same is also true of shareholders.  Unfortunately, the interests of customers and shareholders sometimes conflict, and legally it's the shareholders who must win. 

In my observations across a range of industries, including the electricity sector, this regularly sees short-term shareholder return-oriented decision-making trumping longer-term strategies that could improve quality, choice, and in some industries, prices for consumers. 

Shareholders like profit.  In fact, they demand it, and their demands are certainly being met in the New Zealand electricity sector year after year.  We are seeing record profits for the gen-tailers.  Last financial year, for example, the gen-tailers reported about $2.7 billion in operating profits.  This was an 18% increase on the previous year and works out at about $7.4 million per day in profit.  These numbers may seem small in Australian terms, but they're meaningful sums in a small economy like New Zealand. 

At the same time, some domestic users are struggling to afford to turn on the heater, and 2024 saw a number of high-profile closures of industrial users, citing the high cost of power as contributing to their financial woes.  Some of these businesses were the main employers in their regions, which is devastating for those local economies. 

So when it comes to essential services like electricity, strategic thinking that prioritises maximising profits in the short term over investment in assets that may take many years to make a return is rational, but it puts consumer welfare at risk. 

As consumers stare down the barrel of price increases, it's somewhat galling to note that many generation assets being utilised by our gen-tailers predate the market.  They were built by our parents' and our grandparents' generations and paid for by their taxes when the electricity system was state-owned.  For all the accusations of inefficiency levelled at state-run utilities, some of which are extremely fair pre-deregulation, at least this essential service was provided to consumers at a price the majority could afford. 

Unlike Australia, electricity is not deemed an essential service in New Zealand.  This means that when consumers are in hardship, it is left to the market to determine how that hardship is dealt with in a market that prioritises shareholder returns above all else.  Where does this leave consumers, especially vulnerable consumers? 

Last year, our research found about 20% of households struggled to pay their power bills and more than one in 10 households were living in cold homes after reducing their heating to cut costs.  Our team works regularly with agencies providing support to people in hardship.  A frontline service provider recently shared their belief that at least one person in her region died every year because of a lack of heating in their home.  Yet it is only very recently that voluntary consumer hardship guidelines became mandatory.  A hard-fought win for consumer advocates in the face of lukewarm industry support, and you can understand why they would drag their feet. 

Firstly, vulnerability, particularly vulnerability associated with poverty, is not a private enterprise's role to solve; its job is to make profits for shareholders.  That's not a judgement, it's the reality of how the system is built.  As much as businesses like to promote their social conscience when it suits their intended brand image, when push comes to shove, they're not charities; their role is to make money. 

Secondly, consumers in hardship or experiencing vulnerability don't fit the mould.  They often require bespoke solutions.  At the very least, they need a real human to listen to them and understand their needs.  This is hard to do efficiently at scale; it involves investment in people and systems and processes, all of which eat away at that shareholder return. 

In some cases, the economically rational thing to do would be to purge your books of vulnerable consumers.  In other words, shave the edges off those irregularly shaped members of your customer base so they fit in the round hole that you want them to.  And because electricity is not an essential service and there's no obligation to supply a given customer in New Zealand, this is what we've seen at various times, whether it's retailers refusing to take customers on because of their credit history or creating sub-brands that only offer electricity on a prepaid basis at a higher average cost.  Retailers can appear to be acting reasonably from a risk perspective but are really just reducing costs and abandoning vulnerable consumers to a cycle of poverty and deprivation. 

From banks to insurance companies to airlines and supermarkets, I'm sure this audience can think of examples in the Australian market where customer service and choice are reducing and margins and shareholder payouts are increasing. 

When essential services are beyond the reach of increasing numbers of consumers and businesses that rely on them, surely it's time for us to reflect on our relationship with the free market and ask whether it is delivering what we need it to. 

For energy, it's critical that we consider and answer this question soon because we're placing huge reliance on the electricity sector to dig us out of our climate hole.  We know there will be a surge in demand for electricity as more domestic and commercial users transition off fossil fuels.  Indeed, we're encouraging this. 

However, if transitioning under the existing market design means large chunks of the population are priced out of the market, we either won't meet our renewable energy goals or we risk supercharging existing equity issues. 

In my view, the time has come for New Zealand to recognise energy as an essential service as it is here in Australia, both in terms of citizen welfare and in terms of climate change mitigation.  The government must take a more active role in addressing the cost barriers to access.  This includes ensuring generators are required to invest in sufficient generation development to keep up with demand and maintain stable and affordable prices, rather than continuing to profit from the scarcity of supply. 

The existing market design is nothing sacred, and when the frontline is reporting power prices are putting lives at risk, the need for action is urgent. 

Moving quickly on to the final theme, I'd like to explore the role of markets in determining outcomes for consumers and how, when faced with threats like climate change, they're ill-equipped to facilitate a just transition. 

Home ownership is a goal for many, and for many of us who are lucky enough to have bought at the right time and scrambled onto the property ladder, our investment is a cornerstone of our financial security.  But to get onto that ladder, sometimes we have to make compromises.  Our first home might not be all we hoped it would be.  Maybe it's not as sunny or it's smaller than we wanted.  We compromise knowing that we're investing in our future, and we'll be able to grow our equity as a springboard to the next property, which might be closer to those things that we want in our ideal home. 

When we're doing this, we're actually taking a calculated risk that despite the shortcomings we see in the property we've got, there will be a willing buyer to follow us so that the machine keeps going and we can move up to the next rung on the ladder. 

A high-profile economics commentator in New Zealand half-jokes that New Zealand doesn't have an economy, it has a housing market with bits tacked on.  And he's not far wrong.  Property investment is the main show in town, and why wouldn't it be?  Until recently, growth in property values has outstripped anything else the average New Zealander is likely to invest in.  And we have no capital gains tax, so whatever you make on a property, you bank tax-free. 

When I think of the system, sometimes I'm struck by how fragile the whole thing is.  Like every market, the housing market is subject to overinflation and bubbles.  But we're kind of used to those risks.  But as climate change crashes headlong into lax planning rules which have allowed generations of properties to be built in dumb places, and we continue our addiction to building the bulk of our wealth through property, we do not feel prepared for what's coming.  I'm sure there are parallels with the experience here in Australia. 

Continuing our journey down the West Coast, the town of Westport sits at the mouth of the Buller River.  I mentioned earlier that it rains a lot on the West Coast, and when large amounts of rain fall from the sky upstream from river mouths, it causes an increase in water flow into those rivers.  And sometimes those rivers flood.  Of course, those rivers have always flooded, but the increased frequency of significant rain events, and add in sea-level rise, and your risk profile begins to increase significantly.  I know that will be front of mind for Australians given the recent events in Queensland and New South Wales. 

Following a major flooding event in Westport in 2021, it was reported that at least one major retail insurance brand was considering declining new customers from Westport as it sought to reduce its exposure to the increased risk properties in the town faced. 

Westport's risk profile is not unique among New Zealand coastal towns, meaning access to insurance will be increasingly an issue for many regions going forward. 

This means that in practice, suddenly all those people in Westport who thought they were safe and sound on the property ladder aren't where they thought they would be.  No insurance, no mortgage, no ability to sell to an informed purchaser; goodbye, cornerstone of financial security. 

It should be of concern that none of these consequences are due to any government policy made in the public interest.  They are purely commercial decisions.  Why are we outsourcing decisions on the welfare of our citizens to private entities who can profit off risk for as long as it's manageable and then abandon consumers at the point when they most need them?  And that's not to throw too much shade at the insurance industry.  Insurers have no moral obligation to continue to cover high-risk properties.  The industry is operating the way it always has; pricing on risk.  It's just increasingly that risk is outstripping affordability.  And once that happens, it's inevitable that coverage will be withdrawn. 

Our research shows that consumers are increasingly employing tactics to manage insurance unaffordability, including reducing coverage, increasing excesses, and, in some cases, forgoing home insurance completely.  And this is particularly concerning in New Zealand, where we have a public natural hazard insurance scheme that will meet the first $350,000 of the replacement cost of a home as long as the homeowner holds private home insurance. 

Currently, consumers are the collateral damage of commercial decisions made by insurers with potentially devastating consequences for their financial, physical, and emotional well-being. 

This is a significant social issue for us all, and I do not have a single answer for how to solve it,  I'm sorry. 

Markets are markets, and this is really my point.  They can respond to risks like climate change, but that response will always be self-interested, things like increasing premiums or withdrawing coverage. 

In my view, we're at a point where we need to acknowledge the problem cannot be left to the market to sort out.  Directors and boardrooms with legal obligations to act in the best interests of shareholders are not equipped to act in the public interest. 

The transition to sustainable lifestyles will have to include managing populations out of high-risk areas to safer ones.  That is an unenviable task that will cause widespread social disruption, but it is for elected governments to undertake in a way that ensures the vulnerable among us are not left behind.  It cannot be left to markets to signal through price and product availability. 

To its credit, the insurance industry, at least in New Zealand, is talking about this, and others are beginning to listen. 

Across all of the themes and examples I've shared tonight – information asymmetries, vulnerability, and the appropriate role of markets in determining social outcomes – it is our role, and I'm talking to the room here as consumer advocates, to ensure that the industry is not the only one talking and the consumer voice is clearly heard as these hard decisions, that will define all of our futures, are made.  Thank you. 

CATRIONA LOWE:   

While you’re getting your glasses, Jon, can I thank you for a very thought provoking lecture; you’ve managed to touch on a number of my personally favourite themes, not least that we need to regulate for the humans we’ve got, not the ones we wish we had.  So that’s – the irregularly shaped pegs analogy is one that I'm going to personally take up, so thank you for that. 

Q:

Whilst the room or the people online think about the questions they would like to ask you, I’d like to start by exploring a theme you touched on early in your address; you talked about regulatory whack a mole in terms of the banning of specific terms and encouraged us all to take action under the provisions we already have, which is an important thing for regulators to hear, but how do you think we balance the time that that takes, versus, perhaps, the imperative that is coming with the banning of specific terms that we see in our marketplaces?

JON DUFFY:

A:        

Yeah, it’s a tricky question.  You can see the temptation for being prescriptive and going, all right, this expression is causing a problem in the market right now let’s just, ban it, but marketers are smart; they’ll move around it, and that was the point I was trying to make.  I think that the flexibility that exists in fair trading laws have, although it requires monitoring by regulators, the market requires monitoring by regulators, you have the tools there, you have the flexibility to do that.  I guess it – the question becomes how far up the priority list things like greenwashing are, and I’d suggest – you know, the climate’s not in a good spot and if purchasing – you know, people’s purchasing power has real impact and if we can direct that into decisions that are genuinely positive for the environment, or less damaging for the environment, that is a good thing.  So I would suggest it probably needs to be higher on the priority list than it currently is.

CATRIONA LOWE:   

Thank you.  Now I know this is a room of interested people, have we got questions in the room?  I've certainly got more I'm happy to ask but I'm keen to give other people an opportunity.  I'm not seeing hands – oh yes, we have a hand going up.  Thank you.  For the roving mic, it is a little – it’s about in the middle of the room towards my right.  And if you could just, when you’re asking your question, let us know – introduce yourself and where you’re from that would be wonderful.

CAROL BENNETT:

Q:       

Thanks.  Carol Bennett and I'm the CEO of ACCAN, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.  Thanks for that very sobering and thought provoking presentation, Jon.  It was really interesting to hear your reflections around what has changed in terms of consumer advocacy, and you talked about guidelines rather than enforcement, bespoke regulations needed, and we’ve seen those introduced in the EU more directly.  Regulators needing to take more courage but not necessarily always doing so, and the need for strong independent consumer advocacy.  I was just interested in your example of your greenwashing legal case; I mean, is it your view that the method of consumer advocacy has shifted that significantly to the point where, and with the themes that you illustrated, that we need to undertake that kind of more direct, more drastic action to achieve consumer outcomes, do we need to prosecute legal cases and how has your legal action emboldened your regulators in New Zealand to take more proactive action?  I’d just be interested in your reflection on where you think consumer advocacy is best placed, particularly with the challenges you outlined, and particularly – I mean, if we look to the US with the degree to which the market is driving even government decision making, how do we overcome these challenges as consumer advocates to achieve what we need to achieve for our constituents, but all consumers?

JON DUFFY:

A:        

There’s quite a bit in there.  So maybe if I can start with a simpler – I might steer clear of the US, because that is an outlier, I hope; touch wood.  In terms of how consumer advocacy has adapted or changed over time – and, Ash, you may have a view on this as well – I think we are more flexible now and we’re not a one trick pony; if the circumstances are right and the facts justify it and there’s no regulator taking action in a specific case, which was the petrol company example that I gave, then I think it’s entirely appropriate for consumer advocates to jump in there and take legal action, if legal action gets the outcome that most benefits consumers.  And here the outcomes we’re seeking are not to get a payout or anything like that, it’s to establish case law that future cases can then hang off, paving the way for future litigation, which is probably much more appropriately done by a regulator that has prosecutorial powers.  We’re taking a civil case, so all we will get out of this is a declaration from the high court that the action was in breach of the fair trading act, and that’s likely to be it.  So, you know, in terms of deterrents, well, yes, there’s potentially negative publicity in that sort of thing, but it’s nowhere near the same scale as what would happen if a regulator stepped in and took action.  I’ve forgotten the other points that were in the question, but does that kind of help?

CAROL BENNETT: [inaudible]

JON DUFFY:

I think it will when it’s finished, but at the moment it’s still a work in progress.

CATRIONA LOWE:

Q:       

Thanks, Jon.  We’ve got a couple of questions coming through from online as well.  So one of them is picking up on the research – your research which you cited talking about 90% of people will switch brands to what they see is a more sustainable choice; that means that price is an important factor in green choice decision making. So the question is what could governments do to support greener choices?

JON DUFFY:

A         

You want me to keep talking?  Yeah.  I mean, if I think of the way we regulate medicines, that's quite an interesting analogy.  I mean, Medicines pose a risk to health, so does climate change.  So if you've got medicines out there making therapeutic claims that can't be substantiated, well, in New Zealand we have multiple regulators who will jump all over that and have that company for breakfast.  With greenwashing, we just don't see the same urgency.  So I think governments could embolden regulators to take this issue more seriously.  And I think we do see that in the EU.  Whether, you know – we talked about in one of the previous questions whether that is the exact right approach, there are question marks, it's at least better than nothing.

CATRIONA LOWE:   

I think Ashley might have wanted to get in on this one as well.

ASHLEY DE SILVA:  

I was going to ask another.  There's another question online that I thought I'd bring into the mix.  So, Jon, this one is from someone online wondering if you see ethical investment funds as playing a role to influence corporate boardrooms and the decisions that they make.

JON DUFFY: 

Yeah, they definitely play a role and they definitely have an increasing influence.  There is a difficulty in – many of the ethical investment funds that I've looked at, they have, you know, an upfront statement, you know, we don't invest in sin stocks, that sort of thing, but also we do invest in other international global funds that may have traces of nuts in them.  And so you can't be completely sure that what you're investing in is ethical.  There's also the counterargument that I hear quite a bit around the transition, and that is if you take all the money away from, I don't know, an ex-fossil fuel company and it can't bring in investment funds, it's just going to have stranded assets and it's just going to walk away from those.  I haven't fully formed a view on that.  They no doubt will have legal responsibilities and need to work out whether their business is indeed viable going forward.  But to answer the question, I do see it playing a role and as an influence on boardrooms; how strongly it's influencing them at this stage, I don't know.  And, you know, this is probably a good time to bring in what's going on globally, because there seems to be a move away from woke policies that involve, you know, taking capital away from fossil fuel-intensive industries, and that's likely to have an influence as well.

CATRIONA LOWE:   

Thank you.  Oh, look, we've got a couple of hands going up in the room now.  I'm struggling to judge which of those was first, so I'm going to leave that to the roving mic.

CHANDNI GUPTA:

Q:       

Hello.  It's Chandni Gupta from the Consumer Policy Research Centre.  Thank you so much, Jon, for such a wonderful and insightful presentation.  I was really interested in your thoughts on the nexus between reducing customer service and increasing shareholder profits, and how that just seems to become a trend over and over.  I keep receiving emails from organisations saying, “We're making customer service better for you.  We will no longer be taking phone calls.”  So that happens all the time.  I wanted to ask your thoughts on what are the levers that governments could put in place where customer service is then prioritised by organisations as opposed to it being a thing that they do on the side as either a branding exercise or something that they tack on to go, yeah, yeah, we do that.  What do you think some of the levers could be?

JON DUFFY:

A:        

I think it starts and ends with good competition policy, right?  Good competition should have businesses competing for your customers.  So, you know, one of the things we see in New Zealand where we have lots of highly aggregated markets is limited competition across key markets – banking, insurance, supermarkets, aviation – energy I mentioned.  And it's just all too easy because switching rates are woefully low because people just don't see a good alternative or don't have the alternative.  So if competition policy stopped those markets from being unnaturally aggregated or concentrated, then, in theory, businesses will compete for your custom.  I mean, I still believe that's true.  I am increasingly more and more disillusioned with how markets are working.  But I fundamentally, you know, at a really basic level, you kind of go, yeah, if you've got three businesses to choose from and all other things being equal, one is well-known for good customer service and really puts time and effort into that, you'll go to that business and you'll hear about it through word of mouth.  So it's kind of a simple answer, but I feel like competition is the key.

CATRIONA LOWE:   

There was another question, I think, directly behind Chandni.

JILLIAN WILLIAMS:

Q:       

Hi Jon, my name is Jillian Williams.  I'm from Far North Queensland at the Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network, ICAN.  I was really interested in the collaboration that Consumer NZ has with the environmental advocates in New Zealand in drawing attention through the court action that you've taken.  Is that a long-standing collaboration or is it new and how is it going, and what lessons have you learnt around bringing quite diverse advocates together to draw attention to a really critical issue?

JON DUFFY:

A:        

So this is our first collaboration.  A mate of mine knew the director, they used to drink at the pub together, so it kind of started that way, quite literally.  That's kind of how it works sometimes in New Zealand.  And he was a good dude, so we thought, why don't we try this?  And it's been a natural fit.  We wouldn’t necessarily be heavily involved in all of the things that they do because this is the Environmental Law Initiative.  If – there is some really niche stuff around fisheries quotas and things like that that are slightly outside the consumer remit, but where the stars align and there's commonality in the issues, it's a really natural fit.  So they bring some really high-end legal analysis to the party.  We bring the ability to advocate, and the two things come together; it works really well.

CATRIONA LOWE:   

Lovely to hear about a beneficial collaboration.  I think we've got another question in the room at the front.

MICHAEL WEST:

Q:       

I was just going to say you're touching on insurance.  I think – I was at an event the other week.  It was about insurance and all the insurance companies, and had a guest speaker from America.  One of the major things is about the viability of the insurance industry moving forward, and one of the first things he said was only half of Americans believe in global climate change, which is unfortunate obviously.  And that's why you see the drill, baby, drill mentality out there, which is only going to make things worse.  And there are some places that aren't insurable now, and it's not going to get any better.  Yeah, it's not going to get any better.   

I think the government has to be, you know, really explain to people that, look, the places you're living, you have to move from there because it's just causing more and more trauma for people.  And if we're not, you know, you can do mitigation, but it's just – if some places are flooding every couple of years, it's just going to get worse.  It'll be every year.  And we can't afford the cost.

JON DUFFY:

A:        

Yeah.  And, look, I think the point I was trying to make in the address was that I don't think it's appropriate for us to leave those decisions up to corporate entities, that governments actually have to step in.  I was given an interesting quote in the preparation for this, and I'm sorry, I've forgotten the source of it, but it said, “If you don't believe” – something along the lines of, “If you don't believe in climate change, your insurance company does.” And that was from, you probably know it in the room, it's in Australia – someone from Australia made that comment.

MICHAEL WEST:      

[inaudible] all the time.  And that's why it's going up and up and up.

JON DUFFY:

That's right.

CATRIONA LOWE:

Yes, that's their business, the assessing risk.  We had, I think, another question on this side of the room.  Go ahead.  Cooperation at work.

DAVID HOFF:

Q:

Finally got there.  Yeah, I'm David Hoff from the Consumer Action Law Centre, and I really found what you just said about energy not being an essential service in New Zealand quite fascinating because, yeah, it should be.  And in Australia, we're having similar conversations.  I mean, depending on the jurisdiction, some are considered essential, some aren't.  And in a lot of industries where people would consider these goods and services essential – energy, telecommunications, digital banking, insurance – we're just still having these conversations while people can't really live without them and, you know, suffering, especially vulnerable people.  So I'm just wondering, are these conversations sort of happening already at a higher level, like between governments, across jurisdictions, to come to some kind of definition of what is essential?  And like so actually more can be done to provide extra protections for consumers so they can access these?  Because I feel like the market, as you said, and competition, you know, might not be doing the best job.

JON DUFFY: 

A:

Yeah.  Look, I think the market's always going to be incentivised to argue that the services it provides are important but not essential because essential brings obligations, right?  And so I completely agree with you.  Yeah, I think our government needs to do a whole heap more in the energy space than it is doing.  It's kind of borne out in some of the stats that I gave you in the address, so, yeah, I agree.

CATRIONA LOWE:   

We're – I'm conscious of time.  I've just located my run sheet and worked out that we are very, very close to the end of our time.  But, Ashley, I'll give you the last word.  Oh, I thought you were asking a question but you’re actually going to bring us home, so thank you; you’ve been paying better attention than I have.

ASHLEY DE SILVA:  

I can't hear the Oscars music, but it is playing, Catriona.  So it's my job to thank Jon, and really I can hear from the questions both online and in the room that it was obviously a fantastic presentation.  So Jon, our thanks for sharing your sharp mind on all the issues that are playing out in New Zealand.  They obviously ring so true to us here in Australia too, so it was a fascinating lesson.  I was listening for the New Zealand colloquialisms and sadly I don't think, “May contain traces of nuts in ethical investment,” is one of them; I think we have that here too, but certainly pubs and dudes seem really important in New Zealand.  I did pick that part up.  So Jon, as is tradition, I wanted to give you a token of our thanks tonight, which is a lovely plaque that we've got so that we can thank you for tonight and you can have something to remember it by.  Thank you.

JON DUFFY: 

Thank you.

ASHLEY DE SILVA:  

So thanks again everyone, and thanks for those who joined us online.  Glad you could.  And we'll wish you farewell for now.  But for those of us here in the room, a reminder that we've got some light refreshments just outside, so we can keep the conversation happening there.  Thank you.