AUST & NZ JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (September 1985) 18 (147-163) LAW ENFORCEMENT BY AUSTRALIAN CONSUMER AFFAIRS AGENCIES t John Braithwaite* and Susan Vale** 147 Abstract Consumer affairs agencies in Australia generally rely on conciliation rather than law enforcement. Prosecutions are rare, and when they do occur, penalties are derisory. South Australia is the only jurisdiction with a substantial record of prosecuting consumer affairs offenders. The Commonwealth Trade Practices Act is the only statute under which courts impose significant fines against corporate consumer affairs offenders. Introduction Consumer affairs enforcement is a relatively recent phenomenon in Australian history, at least insofar as it is conducted by specialized consumer affairs departments or bureaux. These specialized agencies were created in response to an organized consumer movement which itself only began to become a force to be reckoned with in the 1960s and emerged as a well-organized lobbying presence only in the 1970s. Consumer affairs bureaux or departments were established in every State and Territory between 1969 and 1974, immediately followed by the Whitlam government's establishment of the Trade Practices Commission at a Commonwealth level. Prior to this, there had been for many decades rudimentary weights and measures enforcement in Australia, enforcement of purity standards for food by inspectors located in health and primary industry departments as weIl as fragmented enforcement of various other consumer rights by disparate agencies. The present study is not concerned with those types of consumer protection enforcement such as meat inspection, therapeutic goods regulation, and pure food control conducted by agencies other than consumer affairs bureaux and departments. Complaints The National Consumer Complaint Statistics System reveals that in 1982-83 65,378 written complaints were made to government consumer affairs agencies in Australia. These statistics, of course, understate the problem because there is an unwillingness or inability of many to put their complaints in writing. In 1981-82, the Trade Practices Commission had 932 written complaints, but 22,000consumer affairs complaints and enquiries overall. While the New South Wales Department of Consumer Affairs had 26,362 written complaints in 1981-82, there were 283,775 telephone calls from concerned consumers and 39,197 personal interviews with consumers. The data to come will show that for every consumer affairs conviction there are more than 200 written complaints which do not lead to a conviction and conservatively over 2000 unwritten complaints. Of course, there is no way of knowing how many of these complaints involve actual violations of the law - a large number of them undoubtedly involve no illegality by the trader. t This project was funded by a grant from the Criminology Research Council. * Senior Research Fellow, Dept of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, A.N. U. ** Assistant Director, Australian Federation of Consumer Organizations.