Consumer Affairs Victoria 

Act: Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012 (Vic).¹

Established: The Act does not create the office. It defines the Director as the person who, for the time being, is employed as Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria under the Public Administration Act 2004 (Vic), and then attaches functions and powers to whoever holds that position.

Purpose: The Director advises on rights and obligations, receives and deals with complaints, monitors compliance, investigates and prosecutes breaches, and administers the Australian Consumer Law as it applies in Victoria.

Where the authority sits

This is worth pausing on, because the three jurisdictions a student is most likely to compare are structured three different ways. South Australia's Act creates a statutory office (the Commissioner for Consumer Affairs) supported by an administrative division. Queensland's Act creates a commissioner for fair trading and makes the chief executive that commissioner by default. Victoria's Act does neither: it points at a public-service employment position and confers functions on its occupant.

The practical consequence is the same in each case — the functions attach to the office-holder, not to the agency name on the website — but the reason differs, and a student asserting that "the Act establishes Consumer Affairs Victoria" would be wrong.

Powers conferred under the Act

Section 109 lists the Director's functions: to advise persons of their rights and obligations, to receive and deal with complaints, to monitor compliance, to prepare and publish guidelines, to investigate breaches, and to prosecute them. Section 110 then confers all the powers necessary to perform those functions, with a power of delegation in s 111.

Three specific powers are worth knowing:

• Disputes. Any person may complain to the Director about a matter the Director can refer to conciliation, and the Act provides for conciliation and mediation and for the Director to take proceedings on behalf of consumers.
• Show cause notices. Under s 119 the Director may require a supplier to show cause why it should be allowed to continue carrying on the business of supplying goods or services, where the Director believes on reasonable grounds that the supplier has contravened the Act.
• Public warning statements. Under s 228, if satisfied it is in the public interest, the Minister or the Director may publish a statement identifying unsatisfactory goods or services, unfair business practices, and the persons responsible.

How the Australian Consumer Law applies here

Section 8 applies the Australian Consumer Law text, as in force from time to time, as a law of Victoria. As so applying it may be referred to as the Australian Consumer Law (Victoria) and forms part of the Act. The guarantees are national in content and State in application, and the enforcing regulator is the State one.

Is it a prosecuting authority?

Yes, and expressly so. Section 109(f) makes prosecuting breaches of the Act, the regulations or a Consumer Act a statutory function of the Director. That is a cleaner answer than several of the interstate equivalents give: elsewhere the question has to be worked out from how proceedings may be taken, rather than read off a list of functions.

Self-check

• Have I said that the Act confers functions on the Director, rather than that it establishes Consumer Affairs Victoria?
• Have I checked whether the guarantee I rely on comes from the Australian Consumer Law as applied by s 8, or from a Victorian-specific provision?
• Have I considered whether a show cause notice or a public warning statement is the more likely regulatory response on these facts, rather than assuming prosecution?