AUSTRALIA | ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb has stressed the positive impacts of a competitive economy for consumers as she outlined the agency’s priorities for the 2025-26 financial year.
At a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event in Sydney, Cass-Gottlieb outlined the agency’s annual compliance and enforcement priorities, including decisively working on consumer protection, promoting competitive markets, and providing clear and accurate pricing information for products and essential services.
“The ACCC‘s complementary mandates support the community in participating with trust and confidence in commercial life and promote the proper functioning of Australian markets. We will continue to pursue our priorities through strong enforcement action, education to foster compliance, and advocacy for reform,” said Cass-Gottlieb.
“Consumers are still doing it tough, and the cost of groceries and essential services have contributed to the significant cost of living stress. We will continue to work hard to protect consumers by using the full range of our tools and powers to enhance competition and fair trading through tough and rigorous enforcement and targeted compliance and education initiatives.”
Cass-Gottlieb said the ACCC would conduct dedicated investigations and enforcement activities in the year ahead to address competition and consumer concerns in the supermarket and retail sector.
One priority will be to address consumer and fair trading concerns, focusing on misleading pricing practices, including surcharging.
Another priority to address competition concerns in the supermarket and retail sector will be to focus on firms with market power and conduct that impacts small businesses or contributes to higher consumer prices.
“Our work will also address the potential imbalance of power more broadly between larger businesses that impose standard form contracts on the one hand, and small businesses and consumers on the other as reflected in our priority on unfair contract terms in consumer and small business contracts,” said Cass-Gottlieb.
Market concentration has been a growing challenge across the Australian economy, not just in supermarkets and retail but also in aviation, digital platforms, and many other essential services.
Australian consumers and small businesses are likely to feel the impact of anti-competitive conduct on essential services in terms of price, choice, and quality. Therefore, from 2025 to 2026, the ACCC will continue to prioritise promoting competition in essential services, focusing on telecommunications, electricity, and gas.
In addition to these cost-of-living measures, the ACCC will add a new priority: addressing misleading surcharging practices and other add-on costs.
“We have previously taken enforcement action against merchant surcharging that exceeds the cost of card acceptance. In the year ahead, our work will focus on increasing business compliance with the excessive card payment surcharging prohibition and improving pricing practices to ensure all add-on costs are appropriately disclosed,” added Cass-Gottlieb.
“Greater competition in markets fuels economic dynamism and growth. This is the key principle on which Australia’s competition policy, and the ACCC’s role in enforcing it, rests. That’s why we use our tools in competition policy and consumer fair trading to achieve the best outcomes.”
When markets are not workably competitive, Australian customers, whether consumers or businesses, pay the price. When businesses compete to meet consumer needs, they are incentivised to innovate and improve, offering more excellent choices, lower prices, and better-quality products and services that deliver value for consumers' money.
“Competition promotes higher growth rates, higher household incomes and a strong Australian economy. And competition contributes to a better standard of living and a better way of life.”
Therefore, one of the enduring priorities of the ACCC has been to address anti-competitive agreements and practices, misuse of market power, and cartel conduct so that competition may be fostered at all levels of the supply chain.
After the new merger legislation is passed, voluntary merger notification will begin in July 2025 before the new regime takes effect in January 2026.
“We acknowledge the challenges navigating this period and are committed to working with the community during the transition. Successfully and efficiently implementing the reform to the merger regime, promoting compliance with the new regime, and taking enforcement action, where necessary, will be a significant focus for us in the coming year.”
In addition to these key priorities, the ACCC will continue its work on product safety and consumer and fair trading issues in the digital economy, focusing on misleading or deceptive advertising within influencer marketing, online reviews, in-app purchases and unsafe consumer products.
Promoting choice, compliant sales practices, and removing unfair contract terms such as subscription traps in online sales are key focuses of the ACCC.
The focus on consumer, fair trading, and competition concerns about environmental claims and sustainability will continue. Greenwashing will be given new emphasis, as will other priorities.
