NICS National Project - Enforcement Guide Review

Under the first NICS Action Plan which ran from 2005-2009, an inaugural National Project was undertaken to develop a resource titled “A guide to enforcement: Indigenous Consumer Matters”. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) jointly managed this project. The resource was intended to be a best practice enforcement guide to help consumer protection agencies deal with Indigenous matters.

The guide has been in existence since 2005, but NICS agencies have agreed to refresh the guide, including developing effective and contemporary presentation of its contents as the National Project under the 2022-23 Action Plan.

NICS member agencies consider that modularising the content contained in the Guide into bite sized video segments with associated learning modules to check understanding of the content contained, would make the guide more accessible to investigatory teams within agencies and would be an effective and engaging way to present the important principles contained in the written guide.

An effective resource that outlines best practice principles in undertaking investigations in Indigenous communities will serve an important role in demystifying how to deal with Indigenous complainants and witnesses and aid enforcement officers in running effective investigations and obtaining the required evidence to achieve successful outcomes in these matters.