Submission to the Treasury

Australian Industry Group welcomes Treasury's continued engagement on unfair trading practices and the Government's commitment to ensuring small businesses and franchisees are not exposed to harmful conduct by more powerful counterparties.

At the same time, our engagement with Treasury and other regulators on this and related reform processes leads us to caution against two related risks. The first is regulatory layering: adding new, broadly framed protections onto a regulatory landscape that already includes the Australian Consumer Law's general protections, unconscionable conduct provisions, the unfair contract terms regime, competition law, and a growing suite of mandatory industry codes – several of which have themselves only recently been amended, reviewed or introduced, and have not yet had the opportunity to demonstrate their effect. The second risk is misdiagnosis: attributing to a legislative gap a problem that may, in material part, reflect small businesses' limited awareness of, and capacity to use, the tools that already exist.