fatvegan

Apparently the governments plans to introduce legislation that would allow the ACCC to end boycotts by trade unions and other organisations.

I find that a little hard to fathom. No one is forced to boycott a company. Consumers can't be forced to act in concert. Presumably, when consumers boycott something it is because they disagree with how the company behaves. Presumably, when a business boycotts another business it's because they worry their customers have concerns. There is no coercion and no collusion.

What would ACCC intervention consist of? A letter warning an organisation that leaflets containing truthful claims about a business' practices have to be withdrawn? Or is it merely an ban on the word "boycott"? Can a leaflet hint at a boycott without actually calling for one? I'm sure what the ACCC could actually take issue with. Even if they forbade "campaigns" against certain companies it would be easy to reframe content so that it was less campaign-like. Maybe the government just wants an end to the colourful rhetoric of the ethical.

There are defamation laws that prevent organisations from simply inventing accusations and that strikes me as the only time that boycotts would be a problem. The Australian wool industry is now sueing PETA for having the nerve to dislike cutting strips of skin out of the conscious lambs. If PETA is being untruthful they should sue them for defamation. The government seems to completely misunderstand how people make decisions. Do they really think that innocent consumers are conned into buying ethical goods by heartless, manipulative non-profit organisations? The damage to business is done by the consumer, not by the writer of the boycott leaflet.

There are existing provisions in the Trade Practices Act (which is the act that would change) to prevent businesses from engaging in exclusive dealing. It means that you can't refuse to buy or sell a good from another business purely because you don't like them. But even goods that look similar often are very different. Wool produced ethically is a tangibly different good to wool produced unethically. If consumers can discern between two superficially identical goods (for any reason at all), then businesses should be able to discriminate on that basis.

The government surely can't demand that consumers look at ethical and unethical goods as identical, but it seems like that is what they are trying to do. "Wool is wool," they claim. Who cares how it was made? The right not to buy something is fundamental and allows inject a small dose of humanity into commerce. Bit by bit the right to give a shit is slowly being withdrawn.