Policy
Engaged in multiple sectors, our team conducts rigorous consumer and policy research to uncover market failures and consumer harm. We actively collaborate with partners, leveraging national and international perspectives to identify and understand issues within markets. By openly sharing insights, we contribute to the creation of impactful policy solutions, fostering momentum for positive change and advocating for consumer welfare.
July 10, 2024
Every person deserves to live in a healthy, comfortable and affordable home. For people who rent, ensuring their home is energy efficient and of a liveable standard is not always in their control.
April 17, 2024
Search is a service that connects consumers with information and, frequently, is a starting point for engaging with businesses or services. Accuracy matters yet increasingly people are presented with the most profitable answer for search services rather than the information they need.
March 20, 2024
In this submission we discuss how elements of AANA’s commendable green code could be strengthened. The key issues we focus on include the need for consumers to have meaningful information to be able to make direct comparisons about the products and services being advertised to them, through setting specific expectations of advertisers with respect to communicating supporting evidence to consumers. We outline extensive problems with trustmarks and self-certification schemes, the influence of imagery, and vague and obscure language in advertising featuring green claims.
March 28, 2024
Each year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) collects data from more than 20,000 Australians in relation to their experiences of different types of fraud, including scams.
January 15, 2024
Many Australian consumers want to make purchases that support good environmental outcomes. However, it can be far too hard to identify what businesses are taking genuine environmental action. The Climate Active program can help organisations understand and reduce their carbon emissions, but it also plays an important role in providing information to consumers.
March 22, 2024
For the electric vehicle market to work well for all Australians, there need to be easy ways to have problems with faulty cars fixed and clear penalties for companies that fail to repeatedly offer repairs, refunds or replacements as required under Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Our research shows that complaints handling is not working effectively for people with faulty Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles and there is a high risk that existing processes will also poorly serve people with EVs.
February 9, 2024
Climate-related financial disclosures are essential to understand how businesses are managing climate risk and to compare efforts across entities. These new obligations should be broadened to apply to more businesses and capture more reporting requirements in time.
January 24, 2024
As part of the 2024-25 budget process, Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) requests the Federal Government to fund and support independent research into consumer policy issues. CPRC is a not-for-profit think tank that develops and champions ideas to make markets fairer for all Australian consumers. We are Australia’s only dedicated consumer policy think tank. To date we’ve led Australian-first research across a range of critical issues impacting Australians today, including quantifying the harms of dark patterns (e.g. subscription traps), impact of greenwashing on Australian consumers, consumer insights on data and privacy, and consumer experience of essential services, including how vulnerability should be addressed and supported within these markets.
