The Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, Andrew Leigh, has been busy recently on putting a stop to a number of egregious consumer rip-offs by corporations, and has got agreement from all the states and territories to legislate.

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We all know the tricks. Give them your credit card and "ka-ching" every month another small, almost unnoticeable payment gets skimmed off, and trying to unsubscribe is a nightmare. Or buy something online for $50 and by the time you get to the check-out, it is $80.

Or delay getting the first service on time and the whole boat warranty is void. It says so in tiny grey type in paragraph 15 on page five. And so on.

Dealing with this should not be a matter of politics, as in the Coalition favours business and Labor favours consumers. We are all consumers and small business is a significant consumer victim of some of the practices to be outlawed.

In a speech on December 1, Leigh cited developments in behavioural science as a reason for corporations becoming trickier and meaner. Corporations can engage clever psychologists to work on consumer vulnerabilities and inattention to trick them into making decisions that they would not have made if the corporation had been upfront.

The significant point about corporations using sophisticated psychological research, is not so much that it is new, but that it is just the latest unfair trick in long-term, ingrained corporate behaviour - to use any technique available to increase profits.

It should mean that the legislation, when drafted, should do more than outlawing a list of specific unfair practices such as those mentioned above - important as that is.

It should state that the purpose of the prohibitions is to protect consumers, followed by a comprehensive prohibition against all unfair and unreasonable practices and then say they include, but are not limited to, the set-out list the specifics. Then if corporations find new tricks that give them an unfair advantage, they will be less likely to get away with it - but, of course, there are no guarantees in the law.

The advantage of the stated purpose and the comprehensive........

© Canberra Times