I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to their Elders, and all Indigenous people joining today, including those working every day to make markets fairer for First Nations communities.
Thank you to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for convening the National Consumer Congress, and to everyone here from consumer organisations, regulators, community groups, academia, business and government.
Your theme is ‘Making it count: What does it take to achieve real change?’
For consumer policy, that question is trickier than it might seem at first blush.
Announcing a reform is only the first step. It also has to reach the kitchen table, the checkout screen, the call centre and the complaints desk. It’s one thing to have consumer rights. It’s another to be able to exercise your rights without needing the advice of a King’s Counsel and the tenacity of a blue heeler.
Consumer protection counts when it changes what people actually encounter. When a parent buying a child’s toy online can trust that it is safe. When a shopper can see the real price before they pay. When cancelling a subscription is not treated as an endurance sport. When a faulty product is met with a remedy, not a shrug.
For too long, consumer policy assumed a heroic shopper. This shopper read every term and condition, compared every price, noticed every pre‑ticked box, remembered every warranty clause, and still had time to hit the gym and cook dinner for the family.
That person is not a consumer. That person is a human terms‑and‑conditions engine.
The absurdity is especially clear online. According to one of the ACCC’s Digital Platform Services Inquiry reports, it would take the average user nearly 46 hours a month to read every privacy policy they encountered in full.
This room brings together some of the savviest consumers in Australia. Yet it’s a fair bet that the Apple users among you said yes to their nearly 9,500‑word user agreement without reading it. For example, did you know that all Apple users have agreed not to use their device for the ‘production of nuclear, missile, chemical or biological weapons’?
As behavioural economics has taught us, real consumers are busy. Thankfully, most firms compete through better prices or better customer service. But some compete by making choices harder than they should be. They hide fees until late in the transaction. They make the ‘yes’ button bright and the ‘no’ button faint. They turn cancellation into a maze. They use countdown timers, scarcity claims, confusing disclosures and preselected options to create pressure rather than clarity.
These tactics change the setting in which decisions are made. They do not merely persuade. They can manipulate and obstruct.
The most recent Australian Consumer Survey found that more than two‑thirds of Australian consumers had encountered at least one issue when making an online purchase in the prior 2 years. People reported charges added during a transaction, difficulty cancelling subscriptions, time limits pushing fast choices, complex terms and conditions, and items added to carts without consent.
Those numbers describe the ordinary friction of modern consumer life. A $9.99 monthly subscription that takes multiple attempts before you successfully cancel. A mandatory service fee that appears only at the final screen. A concert ticket that looks cheaper until the last click.
Our government’s unfair trading practices reforms are made to address those tactics.
On April Fool’s Day this year, I introduced into parliament the Competition and Consumer Act (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill. The joke, for once, was not on consumers. The Bill amends the Australian Consumer Law by banning subscription traps and strengthening protections against drip pricing. It introduces a general prohibition on unfair trading practices, which aims at conduct that manipulates consumers or unreasonably distorts the environment in which they make decisions, causing harm.
That includes failing to disclose material information. It includes burying information in disclosures that are complex, unclear, badly timed or overwhelming. It includes digital design that puts consumers under unreasonable pressure or gets in the way of a decision they have already made.
This is not about punishing businesses for being persuasive. Advertising has always sought to persuade. A sign saying ‘world’s best burgers’ may be optimistic, but it is not a dark pattern. There is a difference between spruiking your wares and manipulating customers with design choices, such as countdown timers that generate false urgency.
The second area is consumer guarantees.
The Australian Consumer Law gives people automatic rights. Goods should be fit for purpose and match their description. Services should be provided with due care and delivered within a reasonable time.
Those rights apply regardless of a manufacturer’s warranty. Yet too often, consumers are told otherwise.
Take the example of a family buying a new television. Within a month, the screen goes black. The family returns to the retailer, only to be told: ‘You’ll need to take that up with the manufacturer’. They leave thinking their only option is to contact a distant claims desk and wait weeks for an answer.
That should not happen. If a product fails before it should, the retailer cannot simply treat the customer like a delivery driver who’s knocked on the wrong door.
Reports to the ACCC about consumer guarantees rose to more than 38,000 in 2025. Around 7 in 10 people who contacted the ACCC in 2025 about an electronic product or whitegoods raised consumer guarantee issues. The ACCC also received more than 3,000 reports about businesses telling consumers they were not entitled to a remedy when products may have failed to comply with consumer guarantees, or wrongly telling them to deal with the manufacturer.
Our government has announced reforms to strengthen protections for consumers and small businesses under the consumer guarantees and supplier indemnification provisions of the Australian Consumer Law.
The reforms will introduce new civil penalties for suppliers and manufacturers that fail to comply with their obligations to provide remedies when required. They will also create penalties for manufacturers that fail to reimburse suppliers for the cost of providing remedies when required. Regulators will have stronger enforcement options, including infringement notices.
The third area is product safety.
For decades, product safety rules were built around a physical marketplace. A product sat on a shelf. A retailer sold it. A supplier could be identified. Responsibility had an address.
Online marketplaces make things more complicated.
Consider a parent buying a magnetic chess game from an online marketplace for a 7‑year‑old child. What the parent may not know is that high‑powered magnets can cause catastrophic, life‑threatening injuries if swallowed.
A dangerous product does not become less risky because it arrived in a cardboard box with cheerful tracking updates.
Our government is providing $6.6 million over 3 years from 2026-27 to strengthen the product safety framework. This includes work with states and territories to improve product recall arrangements so unsafe products are removed from the market sooner. It also includes ensuring online marketplaces are subject to mandatory product safety obligations.
This is also good for competition. A suburban store should not face tougher safety duties than a platform shipping goods to its customers.
As part of this funding announcement, we are working with states and territories on national standards for e‑bikes and nationally consistent requirements for e‑micromobility devices. That work recognises the overlap between product safety, electrical safety, transport regulation and the infrastructure these products use.
Anyone who has watched a teenager on an e‑scooter knows that product safety and transport policy can meet at speed.
Recent enforcement action puts a spotlight onto some of the problems.
Last month, the ACCC commenced proceedings against Amazon over allegations that children’s ‘unicorn’ backpacks sold through its platform lacked mandatory button battery warnings. This is the first time the ACCC has brought Federal Court action against an online marketplace for failing to meet product safety laws.
Enforcement actions have also cracked down on misleading statements about sale prices.
In April, the Federal Court ordered Emma Sleep to pay $15 million in penalties for false or misleading representations about sale prices. In May, the Federal Court found that Coles made false or misleading representations about ‘Down Down’ discounts. And this month, following concerns raised by the ACCC, JB Hi‑Fi will refund around $250,000 to about 200 consumers for making misleading promotional pricing claims.
These cases are reminders to businesses that discounts need to be real. When families are watching grocery bills, energy bills, petrol prices and mortgage repayments, honest pricing is a condition of trust.
So how do we make consumer protection count?
Start with laws that fit the market in front of us: digital design, online marketplaces, subscriptions and tactics that steer people away from real choice.
Then back those laws with enforcement. The ACCC’s work on product safety, pricing, consumer guarantees and online markets reminds businesses that the law is not decorative.
And keep testing what works. Consumer groups hear trouble early. Financial counsellors see the strain up close. Regulators spot patterns. Researchers bring evidence.
As the Albanese government has shown, if consumer laws need strengthening, we will do it.
When advocates, regulators, researchers and governments each play their part, then the busy parent, the pensioner comparing plans, the young person signing up for a service and the family replacing a fridge can all deal with markets that are fairer and easier to use.
Thank you to the ACCC, to consumer advocates, and to everyone here who takes private frustration and turns it into public progress. Good consumer protection does not stop at resolving complaints. It changes business behaviour and backs firms that deal fairly. It gives people confidence that markets can earn their trust.
