EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Subject: Trade Practices Act 1974
Trade Practices (Consumer Product Safety Standards) Regulations (Amendment)
1987 No. 246
Section 172 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (the Act), provides that the Governor-General may make regulations not inconsistent with the Act prescribing inter alia all matters that are required or permitted by this Act to be prescribed. Section 65C of the Act provides that the regulations may, in respect of goods of a particular kind, prescribe a consumer product safety standard consisting inter alia of such requirements as to the performance, composition, contents, method of manufacture or processing design, construction, finish or packaging of goods and the form and content of markings, warnings or instructions to accompany the goods as are reasonably necessary to prevent or reduce risk of injury to any person.
The regulation controls the design of bean bags to require bean bags to have a warning label and a child resistant zipper to hinder access to the filling of polystyrene beads, which constitute a choking and inhalation hazard.
Regulation 11 has 6 subregulations.
Subregulation (1) defines the meaning of terms used in the regulation.
Subregulation (2) prescribes that subregulations (4), (5) and (6) constitute a consumer product safety standard in respect of bean bags and bean bag covers.
Subregulation (3) prescribes that subregulations (4) and (5) constitute a consumer product safety standard in respect of packages of every description containing bean bag filling.
Subregulation (4) prescribes the form of the warning notice which must be secured to or stamped on every bean bag, bean bag cover and packages containing bean bag filling.
Subregulation (5) prescribes the size of lettering in the warning notice and requires that the notice be conspicuously displayed.
Subregulation (6) prescribes that every bean bag and bean bag cover shall have a child-resistant slide-fastener fitted to every opening through which bean bag filling can be inserted or removed.
The majority of State Governments have introduced legislation in similar terms to the regulation in response to the death of a child who inhaled a bead (despite immediate resuscitation efforts by his parents). The regulation extends this protection to all States and Territories subject to the constitutional limitations on the Trade Practices Act 1974.