Unfair Trading Practices – Consultation on the Design of Proposed General and Specific Prohibitions
The Law Council of Australia provided a response to the Treasury’s November 2024 Consultation Paper, titled Unfair trading practices: Consultation on the design of proposed general and specific prohibitions.
The Law Council notes that the Consultation Paper identifies examples of potentially unfair trading practices that cause harm to consumers and small businesses that, it is suggested, may not be captured by, or clearly captured by, the current prohibitions in the Australian Consumer Law (ACL).1
The Consultation Paper sets out several proposals previously consulted on in the August 2023 Consultation Regulation Impact Statement (Consultation RIS) to address such practices, and further stakeholder views on Option 4 are being sought. The full list of options previously consulted on are as follows:
Option 1: status quo (no change);
Option 2: amend the statutory prohibition on unconscionable conduct in section 21 of the ACL, extending it to capture a broader range of conduct;
Option 3: introduce into the ACL a general prohibition on unfair trading practices; or
Option 4: introduce both a general prohibition on unfair trading practices (as in Option Three) with the addition of a list of specific prohibited practices.
Read the full submission below.
1 Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) Sch 2 (‘Australian Consumer Law’).
Last Updated on 30/01/2025
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