By Gemma Rasmussen
Head of Research and Advocacy | Tumuaki Rangahau, Taunakitanga
How we shop has changed dramatically over the last few years. Affordable overseas online retailers like Temu have enjoyed a meteoric rise, with 35% of New Zealanders saying it’s where they made their most recent online purchase.
This makes sense as cost of living woes continue to deepen. Consumer NZ research found 1 in 5 households have no savings, while an additional 32% are anxious about how much they have tucked away. Many of us are searching for cheaper options to make our dollar stretch. Meanwhile, products from Temu, Shein and AliExpress are arriving on our shores at a dizzying rate.
How likely are we to encounter unsafe products? It depends where you shop. If you’re buying from cheap online retailers like Temu and Shein, the risk is high. Consumer groups in Germany, France, Denmark and Belgium tested 162 products from the two shopping platforms and found a 60% failure rate. The worst offenders were products marketed to children under three with more than half of toys tested failing due to small or loose parts, and USB chargers which suffered electrical faults.
If you frequent $2-style discount stores, there’s also risk. For example, Panda Mart have been found to continuously regularly sell unsafe products, with recall notices now being issued for 47 unsafe products it sold.
What about major retailers? When the asbestos sand scare hit our shores last year, many shoppers were understandably rattled. Kmart sold 67,000 units of potentially asbestos laced sand, after it was detected by chance in an Australian laboratory and only reported to safety authorities after a lab manager mentioned the findings in a podcast. A product recall was swiftly launched, but many parents and early childhood education centres were left deeply concerned about the risk of exposure to asbestos.
While the incident was unacceptable, Kmart sells thousands of products and rarely has safety issues due to rigorous internal processes. In this instance, the process failed, and a dangerous product snuck through. Most major businesses in New Zealand are good at keeping safety risks at bay, as they don’t want customers in danger, and the reputational and commercial damage of a safety scandal is dire.
Compare that to Temu’s safety record and it’s clear who is the safer bet. Wherever we shop, there is risk, but some retailers are far less safe than others.
As our retail landscape has changed significantly, it's reasonable to ask how we are addressing increased risks. Unfortunately, New Zealand’s core consumer product safety protections in the Consumer Guarantees Act haven’t been updated, leaving regulators and government operating in a framework where they react after harm occurs. Our current model isn’t prevention based, but rather relies on a problem being found, and then reacting. This is particularly concerning, particularly when product safety issues often impact our most vulnerable – our tamariki.
So, what product safety laws do we have in New Zealand? The Fair Trading Act makes it ‘illegal to supply unsafe goods’ or ‘misleadingly market them’ and the Consumer Guarantees Act requires goods to be of ‘acceptable quality’ which includes being safe. We also have mandatory product safety standards for higher risk categories like toys, children’s nightwear and cots. While good in theory, these laws are failing in practice as it is nearly impossible to hold international retailers to account, and when local retailers misbehave, they are very occasionally fined, but on the whole, ramifications seem paltry.
Comparing our protections to other jurisdictions, we’re behind the eightball. Across the ditch, Australia has many more mandatory product safety standards which means products often undergo more extensive pre-market testing and regulatory checks. The EU enjoys comprehensive product safety requirements across many sectors, with mandatory testing, performance thresholds, product labelling, and recall systems, enabling shoppers to purchase with a higher level of confidence.
While no one expects us to reach the EU’s gold standard of product safety reforms overnight, taking steps to address the increased risks we are now facing would be a positive outcome. Unfortunately, product safety reforms don’t seem to be on the radar of Scott Simpson, Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs .
In 2023, three-year-old Tilly Cambrie died after being caught in a window blind cord. In Australia, America, the UK, and Canada, there are standards in place to ensure cords are covered, so babies, toddlers and children can’t be caught in them. Between 2009 and 2019, six New Zealand children have died from getting caught in corded blinds. Despite it being relatively straightforward to introduce a new safety standard to ensure all cords have a covering, or break when pressure is applied, Consumer NZ was disappointed to hear Minister Simpson has declined to take any action after the coroner’s findings came out weeks ago.
If the Minister responsible for product safety fails to implement a simple safety standard that could prevent child deaths, it seems unlikely he will take effective action to improve our product safety protections more generally.
New Zealanders shouldn’t have to gamble with their children’s safety every time they click ‘add to cart’. We can’t rely on chance discoveries, podcast confessions, or grieving families to trigger action after tragedy strikes. Our shopping landscape has changed beyond recognition, yet our product safety laws have not.
Until the Government takes stronger action to address the product safety risks facing New Zealand, including tighter regulation of online marketplaces, unsafe products will continue slipping into our homes. The cost of that inaction will be paid by families who never saw the danger coming.
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