Industry Regulations

Regulations are the legals involved in making sure your business complies with the law. This includes regulations involved in registering a company, managing employees, privacy regulations, trade marks, and consumer law. These general regulations impact all businesses, and we talk about them throughout this guide.

However, specific industries can have specific regulations too. This chapter is about how industry-specific regulations can impact your business.

Industry regulations

Many industries have specific regulations that apply to businesses who operate within it. Regulations can be both state-based (in that they only apply to particular Australian states or territories) or they can apply Australia wide, and they may sometime require that certain businesses have a licence or permit in order to operate.

For example:

• Businesses that service alcohol may require a liquor licence.
• Businesses that provide therapeutic goods may be subject to TGA requirements.
• The building and construction industry has National Construction Code.
• Financial services businesses may be regulated by APRA.
• Telco businesses may have to comply with the Telecommunications Act 1997.
• Manufacturing businesses need to comply with product safety laws.

If regulations specifically apply to your industry, it’s really important that you are on top of them, as they may have a significant impact on your business operations or your business model and can be crucial for your business’ success.

To give you an idea of how industry regulations can affect businesses, we’ve set out below a couple of examples of the regulations that apply in different industries.

Accommodation and food industry

If you run a hotel, motel, restaurant, cafe, bar or similar business, there are a range of industry specific regulations that may affect the way you operate.

Some of the key regulations include:

• Competition and Consumer Act 2010
• Australian Consumer Law (ACL)
• National trade measurement legislation
• State liquor licensing
• State restricted trading days
• the Food Standards Code
• State-based licenses and permits (which affect, for example, the signage you can use, the music you can play, the days you trade and the way you manage waste).

Finance and insurance services

If you run a business that takes deposits, issues shares, provides insurance or superannuation products, or otherwise undertakes financial service activities there are a range of industry specific regulations that may affect the way you operate.

Some of the key regulations include:

• Corporations Act 2001
• Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006
• National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2010
• Authorised Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) legislation
• General insurance legislation
• Superannuation legislation

Manufacturing industry

If you run a business that manufactures food, beverages, textiles, leather, clothing footwear or other similar products there are a range of industry specific regulations that may affect the way you operate.

Some of the key regulations include:

• Competition and Consumer Act 2010
• Australian Consumer Law (ACL)
• Anti-dumping laws
• Food Standards
• Therapeutic Goods Act 1989
• National trade measurement legislation
• Hazardous Waste (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1989
• Food standards (e.g. the Food Safety code)
• Product safety standards
• Packaging and labelling codes and standards
• Licences and permits (e.g. a licence to manufacture therapeutic goods)

In conclusion…

In this chapter we’ve learned about what industry specific regulations are and explored some examples of regulation that affects some different industries.

It is a good idea to research what regulations apply in your industry so you can make sure your business operations are compliant and your business model is legal. If you’re confused by all the different industry regulations, you should seek specialist legal or professional compliance advice.