Therese Wilson

Be Careful What You Ask For: What Role Now for Credit Unions in Addressing Financial Exclusion in Australia?

This article asks whether credit unions have a role to play in addressing financial exclusion in Australia. It considers the extent to which the current regulatory regime in Australia might hamper the ability of credit unions to contribute to financial inclusion, but then also asks whether credit unions in Australia do, in fact, have the ability to make that contribution, even under a less onerous regulatory regime. The focus on growth and the desire on the part of credit unions to be treated like banks for regulatory purposes may compromise the ability of credit unions to contribute meaningfully to financial inclusion in Australia, with the exception of small, community-based credit unions. Those credit unions do have a role to play, but will need to be granted appropriate regulatory exemptions to enable them to both start up and continue to operate as mutual organisations, focused on providing services to their members rather than generating profits.

Promoting Uniformity: A Comparative Review of J Honnold and H Flechtner, Uniform Law for International Sales under the 1980 United Nations Convention and P Schlechtriem and I Schwenzer, Commentary on the UN Convention on the International Sale of Goods

Academic commentaries on the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (hereafter CISG) arguably perform a more important role than most legal academic texts. That role is essentially to assist in an international, uniform interpretation of the CISG. This becomes important because the CISG is an international convention that does not benefit from consistent interpretation within only one domestic legal system. The commentaries that are the subject of this review - Honnold and Flechtner, and Schlechtriem and Schwenzer - are very different from one another in terms of style and the extent to which they seek to comprehensively address legal interpretations of the CISG. They do, nevertheless, both make valuable contributions to the discourse surrounding interpretation of the provisions of the CISG, and to the causes of internationality and uniformity.

The Impact of Borrower CharacteristicsOn the Effectiveness of Small LoanRegulation

In this article we will consider some possible personality characteristics of small loans borrowers and will explore the impact that those characteristics might have on the effectiveness of current Australian regulation pertaining to small amount consumer and enterprise loans. While the focus of this article will be on Australian regulation, it will no doubt be of some interest to those exploring comparable regulatory regimes in other jurisdictions.

Contemporary Consumer Law: The Role and Effectiveness of Regulation in Consumer Protection

This issue of the Griffith Law Review focuses on consumer law, and the pervasive nature of this area of law. We are all consumers, but do not necessarily identify as such, nor are we a homogeneous group. The boundaries of ‘consumer law’ are also amorphous, and these factors make the challenge of developing effective, appropriate and contemporary consumer law a significant one for policy-makers.