Straddling the great divide between Telstra and the rest of Telco-Land, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has provided seed money to help create a new consumer body for the telecommunications industry.

Where this leaves existing consumer representative groups is not yet clear. The Australian Telecommunication User Group (ATUG) has served as the peak body for decades. But the body Senator Conroy has in mind appears to represent the smaller telco customers.

“The Government wants to give consumers a more powerful and effective voice in the development of telecommunications policy,” Senator Conroy said.

“To demonstrate our commitment to strengthening the consumer voice I have provided a grant of $87,000 to the Consumers' Telecommunications Network (CTN) on behalf of the working group of consumer representation bodies.”

“CTN will act as the co-ordinating body to ensure the smooth transition to the new strengthened body.”

The Government announced at the Consumer Representation Stakeholder forum at the beginning of May that it would support the establishment of a new national peak body to provide telecommunications consumers with a stronger unified voice.

“The telecommunications consumer representation working group has been working to establish a peak body to reinforce and expand current consumer representation and build on the capacity and expertise that already exists,” Senator Conroy said.

“There are many practical considerations to setting up a new body such as this. Some are particularly difficult for not-for-profit organisations such as those charged with this task.”

“The funds will cover costs associated with obtaining legal advice, logo and branding development, website development, a human resources consultancy for wages benchmarking and project management and sitting fees,” Senator Conroy said.