Coalition review of consumer laws may ban environmental boycotts
Parliamentary secretary says there is 'an appetite' for removing environmental groups' exemption from secondary boycotts ban
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Coalition MPs and industry groups are using a review of competition
laws to push for a ban on campaigns against companies on the grounds
that they are selling products that damage the environment, for example
by using old-growth timber or overfished seafood.
The
parliamentary secretary for agriculture, Richard Colbeck, said the
backbench rural committee and “quite a number in the ministry” want to
use the review to remove an exemption for environmental groups from the
consumer law ban on so-called “secondary boycotts”.
“I do think there is an appetite in the government for changing these laws,” Colbeck said.
The
exemption also applies to campaigns related to “consumer protection”
but Colbeck said he would not be seeking to change that provision.
The
government announced last week a “root and branch review” of
competition policy headed by the economist Professor Ian Harper.
Groups
including the Australian Forest Products Association and parts of the
seafood industry are also preparing submissions to the review arguing
that environmental campaigns against companies selling products made
from native timbers or “unsustainable” fishing amount to a “secondary
boycott” and should be unlawful.
Colbeck said the change was aimed
at campaigns like the “NoHarveyNo” campaign by GetUp! and Markets for
Change, which is demanding the furniture retailer Harvey Norman stop
selling products made from native forests.
“They are saying the
forest industry in Tasmania is destroying native forests and that is
clearly a dishonest campaign,” Colbeck claimed.
Markets for Change
campaigns against companies it says are marketing products, like
flooring, made from “unsustainably logged native forests”. As well as
Harvey Norman it has targeted Forty Winks, Fantastic Furniture, Freedom
and Boral.
Tasmanian campaigners also successfully lobbied
international customers of logging companies Gunns and Ta Ann during the
long-running dispute over the state’s forestry industry.
But the
new state Liberal government intends to undo the forest “peace deal”,
expand sawlog production and stop environmental campaigns through tough
new state laws aimed at protesters. It is also lobbying the federal
government for a change to competition laws to stop market-based
campaigns.
Colbeck said he would be suggesting a further change to
competition law to increase the power of the Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission to police general claims made by environmental
groups about particular types of products “to ensure that they are
truthful”.
He denied his views contradicted the government’s stand in favour of freedom of speech.
“They
can say what they like, they can campaign about what they like, they
can have a point of view, but they should not be able to run a specific
business-focused or market-focused campaign, and they should not be able
to say things that are not true,” he said.
“If businesses make a
claim they can be challenged. If someone makes a claim about their
products there needs to be some recourse to enforce accuracy.”
The
Greens leader, Christine Milne, said it would “shock Australians to see
the lengths that the Abbott government will go to to cover the fact
that they intend to log forests listed as world heritage areas”.
“Freedom
of speech seems to be a very selective tern for Tony Abbott, it doesn’t
apply to trying to silence people trying to tell the truth in
international markets about the sourcing of timber.
“He is trying to silence the messenger in order to create a market that would otherwise have none.”
A
spokesman for AFPA said the organisation would be making a submission
to the competition review because “as a matter of principle we believe
Australian businesses should have the right to conduct their lawful
business, both here and overseas”.
Groups like GetUp! and Markets
for Change are currently exempt from section 45D of the Consumer and
Competition Act which prohibits actions that stop a third person buying
goods from another.
Section 45DA provides the exemption from the
so-called “secondary boycott provisions” if their actions are
"substantially related to environmental or consumer protection".
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