Editorial

On Wednesday I attended a session with the Queensland Productivity Commission to discuss the electricity prices inquiry (see article on page 6) and on Thursday I sat with the Office of Fair Trading to discuss the Australian consumer law review (there will be an article in Tuesday’s paper on this).

Both sessions were important but both were poorly attended by the public.

The electricity prices session had one member of the public and two representatives from Mount Isa City Council attend, while the Office of Fair Trading session had no one at all present (apart from me).

In my professional capacity I’ve attended many such consultation sessions for every issue under the sun, and with very few exceptions, there has been a similarly poor turn-out.

Sometimes there are good reasons for this, such as poor advertising, unsuitable timing or lack of interest in the topic under consideration.

But mostly it’s simply a function of our busy lives and too many competing priorities.

It’s a shame in the case of the two Mount Isa sessions I attended this week both of which covered important topics, namely how we deal with high electricity prices, and how we are adequately protected by consumer law.

Consultation is crucial, especially when change is involved, and people rightly complain if change happens without adequate consultation.

But as I said to one of the organisers (who acknowledged there was similar low numbers in other centres where they made the presentation) we as a society need to re-consider how we do consultation.

The Office of Fair Trading have already partially taken this into account, and they go direct to businesses to tell their message as well as having an open forum.

Perhaps we need to look at how better we can use digital services, perhaps with pre-recorded presentations and options to interact with questions and comments.

There’s no easy answer, but clearly the present method is not working.

Derek Barry