01.Introduction
The 2011 Ruby Hutchison Memorial Lecture was delivered on Monday 6th June by Ross Gittins, the Economics Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. The lecture is an annual event, honouring the woman who co-founded the Australian Consumers’ Association, now known as CHOICE.
This year’s lecture was held at the National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, as an opening event for the Australian Consumer Law, Policy and Practice Conference. Ross’s theme was ‘Consumer Sovereignty in an Age of Republicanism’.
“In this ever-more busy and complex world, it’s simply idle to merely warn consumers to beware. Government intervention is justified to help consumers overcome the extreme information asymmetry and to even up the wide gap between producers’ and individual consumers’ bargaining power,” he said.
Read the full text of Ross Gittins speech.