“Big Packages, Little Inside”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31170, 21 September 1966, Page 3

“Big Packages, Little Inside”

(N.Z. Press Association* WELLINGTON, Sept. 20. The Consumer Counci: is investigating packaging and marketing and the system of discounts on certain goods sold in New Zealand. “It could be better here than in some countries and it could b<e worse. But there are some things of which we are suspicious.” the chairman (Mr G. E. Wood) said today. From next year it will be illegal to sell goods marked with meaningless discounts such as “five cents off” or “save eight cents” in Queensland shops and stores.

A Weights and Measures Bill now before the Queensland State Parliament will also make it illegal to sell goods in oversized outer packages which give a deceptive impression of the quantity of the contents. “We have cases of this in New Zealand and we know that it goes on,” Mr Wood said.

“We have had complaints from the public and we have had a number of complaints on cosmetics. The container looks big on the outside, but there’s a hollowed-out space on the bottom.” Mr Wood criticised the practice of placing such wording as “6d off” on the labels of some goods. “There are plenty of cases of this, and I do not think it’s a good thing. It’s expecting too much of the general public to expect it to know the

true values on everything,” he said.

Regulation 12 of New Zealand’s Food and Drug Act, 1946, lays down that packaged goods must show their net content weights on the outside of the package, but the list covered by this law is not all encompassing. Small items in big packaging is legal, providing the true weight of the contents is listed, but the whole practice “gets down to the gullibility of the public” and is “deception to a point,” according to Mr R. S. Jones, of the Health Department. Providing content weights were printed on packaged goods “there isn’t much” that can be done about oversized packages, Mr Jones said. Terming the big-package system “presentation,” the director of Trade Practices and Prices Division of the

Industries and Commerce Department (Mr A. G. Beadle), said: “I don’t think there is any way to stop that. It’s purely a matter of ethics in New Zealand, not law. “There’s plenty of this in New Zealand, although it’s more normal here. We’ve had the odd complaint about the big packet, small article,” Mr Beadle said. Mr Beadle said the new Queensland law would be "ethically right. But if you’re a good shopper, you know what the right price is anyway. It all comes back to consumer education.”

Disagreeing with Mr Beadle on this aspect, Mr Wood said the public could not be expected to know the price of every item. Until the Consumer Council research is concluded “we wouldn’t like to make a pronouncement.” (Queensland Move, p.ll)