ACCC 2024/2025 Compliance and Enforcement Priorities

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced its annual compliance and enforcement priorities, providing Australian businesses and their legal advisors with a practical roadmap of the industries and types of conduct that will face increased regulatory scrutiny this year.

In light of challenging prevailing economic conditions, including rising inflation and interest rates, Australian consumers feeling the squeeze of a cost-of-living crisis and a potential looming recession, it is not surprising that the ACCC has adopted a “back to basics” approach in its 2024/25 Compliance and Enforcement priorities. The regulator has chosen to concentrate predominantly on consumer law issues this year, with particular emphasis on essential consumer goods and services, including food and other groceries, telecommunications, electricity and gas, while also maintaining a broad interest in anti-competitive arrangements and cartel conduct across all industries.

In presenting the regulatory priorities at the Committee for Economic Development Australia Conference, ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb aptly observed that cost-of-living pressures would serve to heighten consumer vulnerability to both Australian Consumer Law (ACL) breaches and anti-competitive conduct. Accordingly, the ACCC has prioritised a focus on various vulnerable consumer groups. This includes maintaining enduring priorities in relation to conduct disproportionately impacting disadvantaged and First Nations consumers, as well as an emphasis on babies and young children in respect of product safety concerns. The focus on in-app purchases in video gaming takes in young consumers who may be more susceptible to unscrupulous commercial conduct. The ACCC will also target ACL compliance by NDIS providers, taking a particular interest in ensuring that the rights of disabled consumers are protected.

The ACCC has also recognised the increasingly precarious position of many small businesses in current economic conditions. While conduct affecting small businesses, which represent 98% of all Australian commercial enterprises, has long featured in its annual priorities for the first time the ACCC has enshrined ensuring the protection of small businesses under both competition and consumer law as a long-term enduring priority. In the coming year, it will direct that focus to compliance monitoring and enforcement measures relating to the recently expanded unfair contract terms regime.

Given that the Australian economy lost an estimated 3.1bn combined to scams in 2022, this is no longer an issue limited to unsophisticated consumers. Following last year’s launch of the National Anti-Scam Centre under the ACCC’s auspices as a coordinated whole of government and private sector resources, it is not surprising that scams have been elevated to an enduring priority. This dovetails with a continuing emphasis on the digital economy and its implications for both competition and consumer law developments. The long-running Digital Platform Services Inquiry is due to wrap up in March 2025, and is likely to spur further law reform in this space.

Sustainability remains a high priority for the ACCC as it considers how to balance the public interest in a transition to a greener economy with fundamental consumer and competition principles. To support this process, guidance on carbon offsets and third-party trust marks and on assessing the public benefits of sustainability measures in the context of conduct authorisations is expected this year.

The ACCC remains an active regulator, with a demonstrated appetite to lobby for reforms, monitor industries and market sectors that it identifies as problematic and undertake systematic enforcement activity which routinely results in significant pecuniary penalties not to mention reputational impacts. Given its wide remit, legal practitioners advising all Australian businesses should remain cognizant of its remit and priorities.

Refer to our infographic below for a quick reference guide to the ACCC’s 2024/25 Compliance and Enforcement Priorities, including our key takeaways on implications and trends to keep in mind.

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