Two new consumer representatives have been appointed to the TIO council and one consumer representative, Reverend Dr Christopher Newell, has been appointed for a further two-year term.

The new council members are Anna Stewart, the Principal Solicitor and Deputy Director of the Consumer Law Centre Victoria, and Myra Pincott, the National President of the Country Women’s Association.

Anna Stewart has worked extensively on a range of consumer issues and access to justice and redress mechanisms while at the Consumer Law Centre Victoria. She regularly works collaboratively with other organisations, including the Australian Consumers’ Association (ACA), the Consumers’ Federation of Australia (CFA) and other non-government organisations in the social welfare and environment sectors, researching, writing submissions and producing reports on consumer law related issues for government, industry and regulators.

“The TIO has a very important role to play in ensuring access to justice for consumers of telecommunications services,” Anna said. “I hope that my experience as a community lawyer and consumer advocate will enable me to contribute greatly to the development of fair and effective TIO policies and procedures that are able to respond to systemic issues and keep pace with the rapidly changing telecommunications market.”

Myra Pincott, was a consumer member of the Australian Communications Industry Forum Working Party which recently completed a review of Consumer Contracts. She also encounters many telecommunications issues in her work on the Consumer Consultative Council for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

“I am very consumer-oriented and very passionate about rural issues,” Myra said. “I would hope that my extensive network into rural and remote areas will serve the TIO by having issues brought forward that are important. Until my work with ACIF, I had no idea about how disadvantaged rural consumers were in relation to telecommunications. I would also hope that with my networks I can raise the awareness of the TIO in rural and remote areas.”

Gordon Frend retired from the Council at the expiry of his term as a consumer representative at the end of June 2005. Gordon has been involved with the TIO Scheme since his appointment in 1999. He participated in several internal TIO working groups, and has also been active as a national consumer advocate on a number of other telecommunications organisations.

He cites as highlights:

• being part of the development process through which the consumer representatives and TIO management sought to keep the Scheme coverage relevant during great change in the industry.
• policy changes that have seen the Scheme adopt a more proactive approach to consumer information, rather than more passively relying on complaints from people who already knew about the TIO.
• seeing the TIO provide a degree of professional support for consumer representatives as a means of addressing significant information and resource imbalances between suppliers and users.

During his time on Council the use of a constructive and cohesive approach by consumer representatives was beneficial and he was proud of the resulting achievements, he said.

He saw the main challenge for the TIO as the effect of continuing communications convergence on the type and level of consumer complaints, and he hoped TIO as an industry ombudsman scheme would be allowed to make the necessary changes to address this.