Senator Stephen Conroy announced that he would be introducing amendments to extend the registration period for the Do Not Call Register.”Current legislation requires that phone numbers be re-registered every three years. That means from the end of May, the phone numbers of those who registered in May 2007 will start to become available to telemarketers, unless they are re-registered,” said Conroy.

According to Senator Conroy, he would introduce an amendment to the Do Not Call Register Amendment Bill 2009 Bill which was currently before the Parliament. The amendment would replace the current registration period with an arrangement that enables the Minister to determine the appropriate registration period.

“Initially, I propose this be set at five years. As soon as these amendments come into effect, the numbers of those who registered later in 2007 will not need to be re-registered until 2012,” added Conroy.

In order to facilitate the quick passage of these amendments, the Government will not proceed with the proposal to extend the Register to include business numbers in the current legislation.