Consumer Council Will “Continue To Meddle”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31761, 19 August 1968, Page 18

Consumer Council Will “Continue To Meddle”

Widely-publicised remarks by Mr B. C. Simpson, advertising manager of the “New Zealand Herald,” to the effect that the Consumer Council should not meddle in things it did not understand, show a lamentable ignorance of the statutory functions of the council, according to Mr G. E. Wood, the council’s chairman. Mr Simpson had said at an international business and law symposium at Auckland University on May 26 that export efforts by New Zealand manufacturers could be jeopardised if the council and others continued to press for comprehensive legislation on packaging. Writing in the Consumer Council’s official magazine, “Consumer,” Mr Wood says this is a dangerous and shortsighted philosophy on which to build an export market. “Surely,” he says, “New Zealand's reputation and image as an exporting nation will be higher in the long term if it is built on fair and reasonable packaging which does not tend to mislead the overseas buyer as to the amount or nature of contents.” He said New Zealand manufacturers could expect to face far more stringent requirements in many of the overseas markets in which they might hope to obtain a foot- ! hold. For example, many packages in use now in New Zealand could not meet the requirements of the very much watered-down Fair Packaging Act, which came into force in the United States in 1967. “If asking for a better packaging deal for the New Zealand consumer is meddling,” Mr Wood says, “I can assure you we shall continue to meddle just as much as before.”

Mr Wood says that Mr Simpson clearly does not know that many of the 40 or 50 consumer organisations throughout the world investigate and publicise those packaging practices which

tend to mislead and frustrate the buyer in his efforts to make a rational choice between competing products.