Law Council of Australia

Business Law Section

Improving and expanding Australia’s first Right to Repair law

Submission Date: 7 July 2026

The Competition and Consumer Committee of the Business Law Section of the Law Council of Australia (the Committee) makes this submission to Treasury in response to its discussion paper on Improving and Expanding Australia’s First Right to Repair Law (Discussion Paper).

The Committee is broadly supportive of the proposals to expand the scheme to agricultural machinery and to improve the existing scheme, but considers that numerous matters require careful design to ensure the reforms achieve their competition and consumer objectives without unintended consequences. The Committee’s key positions are summarised below.

  1. Scope of agricultural machinery: The Committee supports a targeted, evidence-based expansion of the definition of “scheme vehicle” to agricultural machinery and supports the exclusion of cross-sector vehicles that are not designed specifically to perform agricultural tasks. The Committee encourages Treasury to articulate the evidentiary threshold for the inclusion of machinery categories and to consider adopting the definitions in the Heavy Vehicle National Law (Proposal 1).
     
  2. Access to scheme information: The Committee supports limiting access to appropriately qualified repairers, subject to declarations and licensing checks, but notes that this is narrower than the Australian Competition and Consumer Committee (ACCC)’s 2021 recommendations and encourages Treasury to consider whether the scheme’s access arrangements adequately address owner repair of minor, non-critical faults (Proposal 2).
     
  3. Unauthorised modifications: The Committee supports enabling data providers to impose terms and conditions limiting certain prescribed unauthorised modifications and to exclude separable information whose sole purpose is to enable such modifications, having regard to the risk profile of the modification, the extent to which the risk is addressed by other legislative frameworks, and the likely impact on competition (Proposal 3).
     
  4. Additional Scheme Adviser: The Committee strongly supports the appointment of an additional Scheme Adviser with sector-specific agricultural expertise, appointed through a merit-based process, with a national presence, sufficient independence from regulatory bodies (including the ACCC), and the capabilities and resourcing necessary to perform the expanded functions contemplated by Proposals 13 and 14.
     
  5. Safety information: The Committee supports Option 1 of Proposal 4 in preference to Option 2, but considers that any new offence prohibiting the unreasonable suspension of supply must be clearly and unambiguously framed—for example, through a statutory “whitelist” of circumstances in which a suspension would not be regarded as unreasonable (Proposal 4).
     
  6. Intermediaries: The Committee supports improving the accessibility and affordability of repair information through intermediaries but submits that the terms and conditions prescribed for the intermediary context should include robust intellectual property protections, confidentiality obligations, clear limitations on permitted uses and audit rights (Proposal 5).
     
  7. Electronic logbooks: The Committee recognises the potential benefits of access to electronic logbook information but considers that disclosure may give rise to privacy concerns and that the disclosure of any electronic logbook information should be subject to the consent of the relevant consumer (Proposal 6).
     
  8. Scheme pricing and fair market value: The Committee supports mandating that scheme offers be quoted in Australian dollars, while noting that this may transfer foreign-exchange risk to repairers, and considers Proposal 8 to be unnecessary as drafted or, if retained, in need of refinement so that overseas prices are excluded only where there is evidence they do not reflect fair market value (Proposals 7 and 8).
     
  9. Access to security information: The Committee supports reducing the frequency of security declarations to quarterly, subject to safeguards enabling data providers to require a fresh declaration where a technician’s eligibility materially changes, and a positive obligation on repairers to notify data providers of any change in their eligibility (Proposal 12).
     
  10. Reporting arrangements and additional vehicle classes: The Committee supports replacing transaction-by-transaction post-supply notification with periodic reporting and immediate notification of system outages, subject to the adequate resourcing of the Scheme Adviser, and considers that any future expansion of scheme coverage to additional vehicle classes must remain evidence-based and not automatic or presumptive (Proposals 13 and 14).
     
  11. Prohibited terms and conditions: The Committee supports extending the prohibition on certain terms and conditions to scheme offers but cautions that the categories of prohibited terms must be clearly delineated so that the scheme does not invalidate terms that legitimately address safety, security, warranty or liability risks (Proposal 15).

The Committee’s specific observations and recommendations in support of each of these points are set out in the submission.

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Last Updated on 15/07/2026

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