Action Alerts

This action is now over. While there is a result, it is currently "in confidence", so we can't tell you more about it yet. There will be an announcement at some stage, but we don't know when at this time.

28 February 2000

We have been made aware that federal Consumer Affairs, a division of the Treasury reporting to the Minister for Financial Services and Regulation, Joe Hockey, M.P, has advised the minister to take a strictly opt-out approach to the spam problem. As we are sure you are all aware, this would be a disaster for the fight against spam.

The recommendation has been made as part of a report in the area of e-commerce, in relation to a government publication called "Building Consumer Confidence In E-Commerce: A Best Practice Model For Business." This document is intended to serve as a model for industry codes of practice.

Clearly a statement from the government stating that opt-out is not only acceptable, but the "best practice", would be nothing short of a disaster. CAUBE.AU has already stated this clearly in a submission to a consultation round prior to this report that best practice is in fact opt-in. The fact is, an endorsement of opt-out would be worse than ignoring the problem entirely.

Unfortunately, the report in question has not been made public, however we have made a Freedom of Information request for the document so we can review it ourselves. The committee will be meeting to discuss the report again in approximately two weeks, so depending on how long Treasury take to respond to our request, we
may not have the document before then.

The Australian Consumer Association is coordinating a response to the report. Please visit their web site and participate in their response. Also, please telephone your local MP to let them know that you are strongly opposed to any move by the government to endorse opt-out, and ask them to raise this issue within the party and on the floor of Paliament when it resumes on Monday.

Meanwhile, please let other people know about this. We will be posting updates to the home page on the web site, and to the USENET newsgroup aus.net.mail - people who do not want to join CAUBE.AU can still keep up with the news that way, but please try to encourage others to join, as the thing that the government understands best is lots of people being behind a cause.