AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES

期刊基本信息

期刊名称：AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES

期刊ISSN：1839-4655

期刊数据表：

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES英文简介：

Financial hardship, in a credit society such as Australia, can affect almost anyone. To protect consumers from the negative impacts of financial hardship—which can include the stresses of enforcement action and disconnection from essential services—legal protections have been incorporated into the regulatory frameworks for the consumer credit, energy, water and telecommunications sectors. In this article, we outline the findings of our study, which used a survey of financial counsellors around Australia and focus group interviews with Victorian financial counsellors to examine how these legal protections are being implemented by service providers in these four sectors. Our findings highlight a tendency on the part of service providers to take a generic, one‐size‐fits‐all approach to compliance with these legal protections that prevents them from effectively assisting consumers struggling with debt. We discuss the particular shortcomings of this approach in the context of consumers living on low incomes—especially Centrelink incomes—and outline the policy implications of our findings for assisting these vulnerable groups.

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES中文简介：

在澳大利亚这样的信贷社会，财务困难几乎可以影响到任何人。为了保护消费者免受财政困难的负面影响，法律保护已纳入消费者信贷、能源、水和电信部门的监管框架。财政困难可能包括执法行动的压力和与基本服务的脱节。在这篇文章中，我们概述了我们的研究结果，该研究使用了对澳大利亚各地金融顾问的调查和对维多利亚州金融顾问的焦点小组访谈，来研究这些法律保护是如何被服务提供者在这四个行业中实施的。我们的研究结果突显出，服务提供商倾向于采取一种通用的、“一刀切”的、“适合所有人”的方式，来遵守这些法律保护措施，这些保护措施阻止它们有效地帮助陷入债务困境的消费者。我们讨论了在低收入消费者的背景下，这种方法的特殊缺点，特别是中心收入，并概述了我们的研究结果对帮助这些弱势群体的政策含义。

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES在线问答：