The Commonwealth Bank listed their Mastercard exchange rate as
US$91.93 for AU$1 last night. As the Ozzi dollar climbs higher against the US green back telescope prices remain constant in Australia.
Yet again Australian importers are reticent to pass on the saving to the many amateur Australian astronomers - preferring to pocket any exchange rate gains for themselves.
Notably Meade, Celstron and Losmandy prices in Australia are totally disproportionate to those listed for US residents.
To make matters worse Ozzi astronomers are limited in what they can legitimately import directly. US online shops are not meant to sell Celestron, Meade and Orion scopes to Australians - a measure that would seem to protect Australian distributors from global competition.
One would have imagined that the Australian Restrictive Trade Practices Act or the more recent Free Trade Agreement between the US and Australia would have afforded Australians protection against such seemingly blatant profiteering. Either legislation needs to be amended to provide such protection or current legislation needs to be better policed.
National Australian Legislation and International Agreements aside there would seem to be the distinct possibility that another resolve could arise. That of the consumer co-operative.
For instance Ice In Space now has a membership of 3,900. It is clearly a national collective with highly defined market profile and calculable annual market expenditure. It already provides consumer support and enjoys a very high level of consumer trust.
Such an organization poses a potential threat to the established Astronomy equipment distributorship's already in operation in Australia.
An Ice-Co-Op operating on 10% mark-up to cover costs could potentially relegate current Australian Distributorship's to only supplying department store telescopes.
