Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026

Senator ANANDA-RAJAH (Victoria) (11:26): I rise to speak on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026. This scenario should be familiar to all Australians. You want to buy an airline ticket, you start off with one price and then you're prompted, as you're going through the payment system, as to whether you want extra leg room or whether you want extra baggage allowance—or maybe you want to hire a car or perhaps you want to choose between a sandwich or noodles.

By the time you get to the end of it, you realise the final cost is way higher than you were first led to believe. Meanwhile, you've got dinner going in the kitchen, you're nursing a headache because you haven't slept—frankly, I don't know anyone who sleeps well in this country; I certainly don't, and no-one sleeps well or gets a good night's sleep because we're all perpetually exhausted—and you've got your child tugging at you, needing help with their homework.

No-one has time for this. Then there's another scenario. You're a young person.

You've signed up to a gym. You decide maybe six months down the track that you want to cancel the gym membership, except it is almost impossible to do so. Here's another scenario.

You have subscribed to a newspaper magazine because you want to stay abreast of current affairs. You decide you want to cancel the subscription because circumstances have changed; you've decided to find something else. You click through various pages on the site.

You can't find where to cancel the subscription; it isn't a single button. In the end, you send an email—goodness knows where this email goes; it disappears off into the aether. Then you decide, 'Alright, I'm going to try the 1800 number.' You ring this number and you get a call centre in another country.

You speak to the person. They then say to you: 'We're going to issue you a email. Can you send another email back to confirm,' et cetera—and so it goes.

This stuff drives Australians crazy, undermines their confidence in business and drains their hip pockets. We are calling time on this nonsense. This bill introduces measures to basically ban unfair trading practices.

The level of harm is significant. Every year, more than five million Australians say they have been caught up in at least one unfair trading practice—things like sneaky fees and confusing and pressure based sales pitches. It comes with a cost; Australians are losing around $5 billion a year to these kinds of sneaky, underhand tactics, at a time when the cost of living is a real issue for millions of Australians.

But it's not just consumers who cop it; it's also small businesses. Roughly one-third of small businesses report being hit with unfair behaviour from suppliers or digital platforms, like sudden changes in their contracts or unclear fees. With regard to drip pricing, it shows up in around 40 per cent of online purchases, including travel, ticketing and other digital services.

And who is affected? Older people are particularly vulnerable; they are less digitally literate, so they tend to be fair game. One in five people over the age of 65 said they have been pressured into buying something they didn't really want.

It turns out that consumers on lower incomes are also targeted by these sorts of tactics, especially in essential services like energy, credit and telco plans—but so are young people. Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 say that they have experienced at least one unfair digital practice in the past year; that's three in four young people in that age group.

Why? Because they are new entrants into the payment system. They've come straight out of school.

They're less experienced and less savvy. But this makes them learn these lessons the hard way. We are calling time on this nonsense.

Australia is catching up now with the rest of the world, with other peer countries like Singapore, the UK and Japan and with the EU having banned these unfair trading practices that seek to manipulate, coerce, pressure or exploit consumers. This legislation ensures that the law can address harmful conduct, both now and as markets evolve, without relying on ongoing piecemeal amendments.

It sets across all sectors clear, consistent standards of fair conduct which are designed to improve consumer confidence and encourage healthy competition. Competition is the consumer's best friend. It ensures that consumers are protected not only from outright deception but also from the kinds of subtle, cumulative influences that can undermine genuine choice.

Support for stronger protections is huge. Around 84 per cent of Australians say that they want tougher rules against unfair trading practices. This bill will help give Australians the confidence that they need that they aren't being short-changed at the check-out or when they are using these services.

Indeed, CHOICE lauded these laws. They said: For too long, big businesses have raced each other to the bottom when it comes to unfair practices. Particularly when so many people are doing it tough, this important reform will help remove some of the worst tricks and traps designed to get people to spend more than they should.

Businesses should compete on price and quality, not the most effective ways to manipulate or distort the decisions consumers make. We agree. This bill forms part of our wider agenda to strengthen competition, improve transparency and support consumers across this country.

The government has legislated the most significant overhaul of Australia's merger laws in 50 years, ensuring that large mergers are properly assessed before proceeding and that anticompetitive acquisitions do not escape scrutiny. Just this morning I read that the ACCC has banned Coles from opening a supermarket in Western Australia because of competition reasons.

This is clear evidence that these changes to competition laws are working. We actually increased funding to the ACCC by about $30 million to enable them to deal with this kind of enforcement work. We are also cracking down on shrinkflation so that we can clearly see when products shrink while prices stay the same.

I cannot believe how we've been gamed at the check-out, honestly. We have made the food and grocery code mandatory, backed by real penalties that have gone up from $10 million to $100 million. Penalties matter.

They act as a deterrent to this kind of dodgy and underhand behaviour. Through national competition policy reforms, the government is working with states and territories to remove barriers that stop new businesses entering the market. We want new entrants to enter the market.

We talk about the haves and the have-nots. There's another battle that's being played out, and it's the fight between new entrants and incumbents. The incumbents will do everything they can to keep new entrants out.

But that is really bad for the economy, it is really bad for competition and it's bad for consumers. This bill will help address some of that. This bill gives consumers something that they have been missing for a long time, and that is confidence—confidence that they can shop, book a service, enter a subscription or compare prices without being pushed into choices they did not intend to make; confidence that regulators can act when conduct is unfair, not only when it is technically misleading; and confidence that honest businesses will not be undercut by those who profit from this kind of confusion.

I commend this bill to the Senate.