Treasury Laws Amendment (More Competition, Better Prices) Act 2022

The Treasury Laws Amendment (More Competition, Better Prices) Act 2022 is an amending Act. It does not operate as a complete standalone code. Instead, it changes existing federal legislation, mainly the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, including the Australian Consumer Law in Schedule 2 to that Act, and it also amends the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001.

For business owners, the Act is best understood as a major risk-setting change rather than a new compliance system you can read in isolation. It increases and restructures penalties in important parts of competition and consumer law, and it also strengthens the unfair contract terms regime through a detailed set of amendments dealing with prohibition, remedies, standard form contract assessment, thresholds, exclusions, application rules and a later review of the amended provisions.

If your business uses repeat contracts, online terms, subscriptions, standard service agreements or consumer-facing sales practices, this Act is relevant because it changes the consequences of non-compliance under laws you may already be subject to. It also means older assumptions about penalty caps and older assumptions about whether template terms are low-risk may no longer be reliable.

The Act received Royal Assent on 9 November 2022. Under the commencement table, sections 1 to 3 commenced on that date. Schedule 1 commenced on 10 November 2022, being the day after Royal Assent. Schedule 2 commenced on 9 November 2023, being the day after the end of the period of 12 months beginning on the day of Royal Assent.

These dates matter because businesses often keep using older documents and processes for long periods. If your business continued using standard form contracts after 9 November 2023, or engaged in conduct after 10 November 2022 that falls within amended penalty provisions, the amended law may be the relevant starting point for assessing risk.

Version control is important. Businesses should be able to show when a contract template, website terms, subscription flow or policy was updated and when it was used. That can matter when working out which legal settings applied at the relevant time.

A central feature of the Act is the increase in maximum penalties across a range of provisions in the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Australian Consumer Law. The legislation text shows many body corporate maximums increasing from $10,000,000 to $50,000,000 and many individual maximums increasing from $500,000 to $2,500,000.

The Act also rewrites key penalty machinery in section 76 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. For certain items in the penalty table, the maximum for a body corporate is the greater of specified amounts. Those amounts include $50,000,000, or 3 times the value of the relevant benefit where the court can determine that value, or 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period where the court cannot determine the value of the benefit.

That matters because penalty exposure is no longer just a fixed cap issue. If conduct continues over time, or if the business sits within a corporate group, the turnover-based limb may produce a much larger figure than many businesses expect. The same pattern appears in many Australian Consumer Law offence provisions amended by Schedule 1, where the fixed corporate amount rises to $50,000,000 and the fallback turnover-based amount becomes 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period.

The Act also includes other specific penalty changes, including amendments to telecommunications-related provisions in section 151BX and changes to some individual maximums. The practical point is that businesses should not rely on older penalty assumptions when assessing exposure, regulator correspondence or settlement strategy.

The Act inserts a definition of adjusted turnover into the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Australian Consumer Law. Broadly, adjusted turnover means the sum of the values of all supplies that the body corporate, and any related body corporate, have made or are likely to make during the relevant period, excluding stated categories.

The listed exclusions include supplies made between those related bodies corporate, input taxed supplies, supplies not for consideration in the stated circumstances, supplies not made in connection with an enterprise carried on by the body corporate, and supplies not connected with the indirect tax zone. The definition also adopts the meaning of expressions used in the GST legislation where the same expressions are used.

The Act also defines breach turnover period. In broad terms, it is the longer of two periods. One is a 12-month period ending at the end of the month in which the conduct ceased or proceedings were instituted, depending on the type of contravention or act. The other is a period ending at the same time but starting at the beginning of the month in which the conduct occurred or began occurring. This means the relevant turnover period can extend beyond a simple 12-month snapshot where conduct continued over time.

For businesses, this is a practical warning. If you are estimating exposure, you may need input from both legal and finance teams. Group structure, related entities, excluded supplies and the timing of the conduct can all affect the calculation.

Schedule 2 is devoted to unfair contract terms. Its structure shows the breadth of the reform. It covers prohibition of unfair contract terms, remedies, determining what is a standard form contract, contract thresholds, terms and contracts excluded from the rules, provisions referring to non-party consumers, application rules and a review of the amended provisions. The schedule amends both the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001.

At a practical level, businesses most likely to be in scope are those using standard form contracts with consumers or small businesses. The legislation extract does not set out every amended operative provision in full, but the structure makes clear that scope questions turn on matters such as whether the contract is standard form, whether thresholds are met, and whether any exclusions apply.

For many businesses, the safest working assumption is that repeat-use templates offered with little or no real negotiation deserve review. That includes customer terms and conditions, online checkout terms, subscription agreements, service agreements, supplier onboarding documents and similar templates. If your business operates in financial products or financial services, parallel amendments under the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 may also be relevant.

Businesses that usually sit outside the immediate focus are those not using standard form contracts, or those dealing under genuinely negotiated bespoke agreements, but even then the actual statutory tests and exclusions should be checked before relying on that view.

The Act is not just about penalty theory. It should change how businesses manage documents and conduct in practice. On the contract side, businesses should review standard form documents that are repeatedly issued to customers, users, subscribers or smaller counterparties. Clauses that often warrant close attention include unilateral variation rights, one-sided termination rights, automatic renewal settings, broad indemnities, broad limitations of liability and terms that let one party decide disputes or compliance issues in its own favour.

On the conduct side, Schedule 1 means businesses should revisit compliance settings for consumer-facing and competition-sensitive behaviour. If your business uses strong marketing claims, urgency messaging, cancellation friction, bundling practices or other conduct that could attract civil penalties, the financial consequences of a breach may now be much higher than under the previous settings.

This is especially important for startups and growing businesses that scaled using template documents drafted years ago. A contract that was never challenged before may still create serious risk if it continued to be used after the unfair contract terms amendments commenced. Likewise, a sales practice that once seemed commercially tolerable may now carry a much larger downside if it falls within an amended penalty provision.

The quickest way to read this Act is as follows. Schedule 1 increased many maximum penalties and replaced older annual turnover references with adjusted turnover. In key provisions, if the court cannot determine the value of the relevant benefit, the maximum may be based on 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period. In some other provisions, different turnover-based formulas apply, such as 10% of adjusted turnover over a stated 12-month period.

Schedule 2 strengthened the unfair contract terms regime and is organised around prohibition, remedies, standard form contract assessment, thresholds, exclusions and application rules. That means businesses should not treat unfair contract terms as a minor drafting issue. It is a live compliance issue for any business using standard form contracts with consumers or small businesses.

when checking the current position, businesses should check the current consolidated legislation, identify the exact provision that applies to their conduct or contract, and confirm whether the Competition and Consumer Act pathway or the ASIC Act pathway is the relevant one.

This page is a practical guide to the amending Act, but businesses should do a final check before acting on it. First, identify the exact conduct or contract you are concerned about. Second, locate the current consolidated version of the amended legislation. Third, confirm whether the issue sits under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, the Australian Consumer Law or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001. Fourth, check commencement and application timing. Fifth, if turnover-based exposure may matter, involve finance early because group structure and excluded supplies can affect the calculation.

That process is particularly important if your business is part of a corporate group, uses subscriptions or auto-renewals, relies heavily on online terms, or operates in a regulated financial context.