Voices for Change: the Consumer Right to Representation

World Consumer Rights Day 2002: Voices for Change
flooded by requests for input and commentary
that require an expanding range of skills. The
demand for increasing professionalism
coupled with lack of training and chronic
under-staffing can slow down progress.
Another challenge of consolidation is that
original enthusiasms about consumer
representation can flag in the face of practical
experience. There are critical cultural and
operational differences in the way that
consumer and community groups function,
as compared to government bureaucracies,
professional organisations, industry groups
and others. Some differences stem principally
from the discrepancy in funding and staffing.
Others, like accountability, confidentiality and
potential conflicts of interest, can be dealt with
through the creation of mechanisms and
guidelines for transparency and ethical
conduct.
10. Get training: Representatives are often
“dealing with people who don’t necessarily
want to listen to their point of view and are
often sceptical of the representative’s aims,”
notes the National Consumer Council (NCC,
UK). Training can make a difference. Courses
like the NCC’s A Stronger Voice and those
offered by Australia’s Consumer Health
Forum bolster general representation skills,
including questioning and informationgathering
techniques, evaluation methods,
negotiation and persuasion skills, strategies for
handling conflict, lessons in creative thinking
and the like. Training possibilities for
representation work in campaign and
advocacy areas such as legislation, utilities,
food safety, trade/economics, using the law
and others are regularly offered by Consumers
International to its member groups.
11. Measure success: It is easy to see when
representation systems fall short of expected
standards of openness and independence, or
when their work is going wrong. But
monitoring and judging the substantive results
of consumer representation is hard to do. It is
relatively simple to record the activities of
representatives and representative bodies and
measure their outputs (e.g. numbers of
meetings, submissions to decision-making
bodies, public statements etc.), but there are
Effective Meetings
It is a fact of life that representatives spend
a lot of time in meetings. Here’s a checklist
to make the most of them.
Before meetings:
• Get the appropriate papers and make the
time to review them;
• Find out who will be attending;
•Identify areas of common ground
between you and others in attendance
and try to establish shared interests
before the meeting;
• Identify in advance key objectives for
relevant agenda items, using research,
background information, possible allies,
key difficulties, desirable outcome,
fall-back positions;
• Note likely follow-up action.
During meetings:
•Know the rules;
• Circulate your positions;
• Request amendments or add agenda
items if necessary;
•Keep the committee to its objectives;
•Make your points;
• Record dissent;
•Take notes.
After meetings:
• Reflect and evaluate;
• Report back to your organisation;
• Make or generate news based on
meeting outcomes;
• Collect new information and follow
up contacts;
• Plan for the next stage.
serious problems when it comes to evaluating
influence on decisions and events.
One reason is that there are so many other
factors at work – consumer representation is
only one input to a decision-making process
influenced by a range of other interests and
events. It is often impossible to determine what
effect each player has had on the eventual
outcome. Secondly, there are often long time
lags in policy-making, especially in law-making,
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