Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026

Senator CANAVAN (Queensland—Leader of the Nationals) (12:06): by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 3912 together: (1) Schedule 1, item 7, page 4 (line 17), before "manipulate", insert "unfairly". (2) Schedule 1, item 7, page 4 (line 20), after "to cause", insert "material". These amendments, as I discussed in my second reading speech, would just clarify the definition of unfair conduct in this bill.

In particular, it would add the word 'unfairly' before the word 'manipulate' to make it clear that this is targeted at malicious or devious, if you like, types of manipulation. Obviously we don't want to capture usual practices within a competitive marketplace. The other amendment here would be to add the word 'material' ahead of the word 'detriment'.

Again, as I stressed in my second reading speech, it is typical in competition laws that penalties only apply in the event of a certain threshold being reached. So we only trigger section 46 misuse of market power provisions when competition is substantially lessened, not just when competition is lessened in any case. The way this particular term has been drafted at the moment would potentially give rise to a penalty in the event of any detriment, minuscule as it might be.

I don't think that's probably the government's intention. I think we should be clear with our language. So we've suggested adding the word 'material' so it would only apply when there's material detriment to a consumer.

We should focus our regulation on those issues that create the greatest harm.