The Retail Council wants the mandatory product safety reporting period lengthened from two days to four, to give stores more time to investigate whether an item is dangerous.

The group, representing major retailers such as Harvey Norman, Myer and Bunnings, says the two-day period for alerting the consumer watchdog if a product has caused injury, illness or death is resulting in over-reporting, with no evidence consumer safety is being improved.

“The current time period does not sufficiently balance the need to quickly address safety concerns against the need for retailers to have sufficient time to conduct internal reporting and investigations,” the council says in a submission to the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) review.

It says four days would allow for adequate follow-up with customers, while also ensuring unsafe products are subject to a timely recall.

However, consumer group Choice says the two-day period should be retained, with Australia “in the grip of a dodgy product boom”.

“The timeframe for making mandatory reports is set at two days because this is a critical matter, with real, potentially devastating, impacts on consumers,” spokesman Tom Godfrey said.

“This is not the time to relax product safety laws – we need to strengthen the system, increase penalties and dramatically improve transparency.”

Last financial year the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) reported 670 product recalls, up 12% on the previous year.

But the Retail Council says “there are very few product safety warnings that are ever followed up by the ACCC”.

Consumer Affairs Australia and New Zealand will release an interim report on the ACL review this year and report to consumer affairs ministers by next March.