A Do-Not-Call Registry for regulating telemarketing in Australia

The Do-Not-Call Registry began operation in early May 2007: www.donotcall.gov.au .

See the telemarketing page for information on the Government's proposals, which they announced on 4 April 2006.

See also http://www.acma.gov.au/ACMAINTER.1638528:STANDARD::pc=PC_101017

The material below is only of historical interest:

Robin Whittle   rw@firstpr.com.au    30 November 2005        

To the parent directory for information on telemarketing regulation, customer activated malicious call trace and other telecommunications privacy matters.

Advocates and Social / Scientific and Commercial Market Researchers!

Minister Helen Coonan has a promising proposal for a Do Not Call Register to properly protect people from telemarketing:
http://www.dcita.gov.au/tel/do_not_call

Submissions were due by 30 November 2005. 

My submission is at:  2005/DNC-Robin-Whittle-2005-11-30.html

This is a potentially excellent system, but there are many details to get right to make sure it properly controls telemarketing, without creating privacy and security problems for those who want to be protected.  To do this, the system must be more sophisticated and more encompassing than any Do Not Call register so far devised.

I think that there should be protection for those who do not want to get Social / Scientific or Commercial Market Research calls, but that the low level of these calls makes a governent regulatory approach more trouble than the problem it is designed to solve.  So I advocate self-regulation for research calls, ideally in two categories.  Whatever happens, we much ensure that all types of telemarketing call are properly regulated for all telephone users, and that research calls are not caught up in the net which is intended to catch telemarketing calls.
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