Consumer power: 50 years of Choice

Editorial

Long before Today Tonight and A Current Affair were exposing shonky businesses to public condemnation, the Australian Consumers' Association was subjecting everything from washing machines to baby food to rigorous testing, in order to ensure that Australians were getting the best and safest bang for their buck.

From humble beginnings in 1960 when Ruby Hutchison and Roland Thorp set up the Australian Consumers' Association and began publishing Choice magazine, the membership-funded consumer organisation now has over 200,000 members and is the leading consumer advocacy group in Australia.

Consumer power: 50 years of Choice looks at the impact the organisation has had in exposing bodgy products, its role in consumer advocacy and campaigning, and presents the inside workings of the Choice testing labs for public scrutiny.

See the independent and rigorous testing processes undertaken by Choice on a wide range of consumer products; witness the organisation's important advocacy role, as illustrated by a landmark legal test case from the 1990s that gave Choice greater power to act on behalf of consumers; and see how campaigning by the Australian Consumers' Association has ensured that we can now take date stamping, ingredient labelling and the listing of nutritional information on foods for granted.

Canny consumers should always have a Choice!

Richard Watts, Citysearch

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