Lisa Darmanin (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

It is definitely not a trade union. I happily pay my subscription fees to those organisations. Right now, the only practical option that I have available to me, for this particular subscription, is to change my bank account and close it down. It is absolutely ridiculous.

I hope most Australians haven't had my experience, but I am sure that many Australians have. The landscape that consumers navigate now has changed dramatically. More and more of our purchases, subscriptions and services are delivered online. Digital platforms are a normal part of everyday life. They bring enormous convenience and opportunity, but they have also created new ways to exploit consumer attention, create confusion and ultimately cause harm. We are not blind to these behaviours, which is why the government is taking action.

Consumers are increasingly navigating systems designed to steer behaviour. The ACCC's digital platform services inquiry and the Consumer Policy Research Centre's Let me out report have shone a spotlight on the practices that the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026 seeks to address. From subscription traps to drip pricing, businesses are purposefully making it difficult for customers to understand their pricing or to cancel a service. The consumer watchdog said that consumers simply do not engage with privacy policies and, in many cases, have little practical option but to accept the terms and conditions in order to access a product or service. Frankly, this isn't surprising. According to the ACCC, it would take the average person nearly 46 hours every month to read every privacy policy that they encounter. The average privacy policy contains almost 7,000 words and takes around half an hour to read. The reality is that consumers cannot reasonably engage with that amount of information, no matter how diligent a consumer you might think you are.

That is where so-called dark patterns come in. These are practices designed to confuse users, make it difficult for them to express their genuine preferences or manipulate them into taking certain actions. They steer consumers towards outcomes that may not reflect what they actually want. Look, this isn't about punishing businesses for making their products attractive or persuading consumers to give them a go. Businesses have always advertised, and they have always competed for customers. The issue is when every click, every preference and every behaviour is analysed and used to create an environment designed to influence decisions in ways consumers may not fully understand, and, at that point, choice really stops being genuine.

Apps and platforms have learned that automatic renewals and friction fuelled cancellation processes boost revenue. They have learned that hiding menus, making certain options harder to find, changing the order in which choices are presented or requiring consumers to jump through multiple hoops can slow down or prevent cancellations altogether. Something that took one click to join can suddenly take an afternoon to leave—or, in my case, a never-ending story.

Australians are noticing. I chaired the inquiry into this legislation. Research before the committee found that three in four Australians with subscriptions have had some form of negative experience when trying to cancel. One in 10 have given up trying to cancel altogether and continue paying for a product or service that they no longer need or want, and I am one of those unlucky 10 per cent. Something that took one click to join can suddenly take an entire afternoon or much longer to leave. That is not retention based on value; it is retention based on friction and deception.

During the Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill, Ms Chandni Gupta, deputy chief executive officer and digital policy director of the Consumer Policy Research Centre, estimated that Australians are likely losing more than $1 billion—$1 billion!—every year to unfair trading practices. Personally, I would have thought a better business model would be earning trust and retaining customers because the product or service that a business provides is genuinely valuable, not because a business has made it more difficult than necessary to leave and is hoping customers forget, give up or become frustrated by the cancellation process.

These practices are not limited to subscriptions. Another common example, as mentioned by Senator Canavan, is drip pricing. Many Australians will have experienced this when booking flights or holidays. You see a fare that looks really cheap and attractive. You start the booking process, and then a fee appears and then another one and then another one. By the end of the transaction there might be four or five additional charges, and the fare no longer looks nearly as appealing as it did at the start. These are called junk fees. They distort comparison and they trap customers. You can abandon the purchase and start again to compare prices, but there is a good chance that you won't, and that is exactly what these businesses are relying on. Or it might be an app that appears free when you first download it only for key features to become paid add-ons once you are already signed up and have invested in the service. These practices are often stacked up on top of one another to wear consumers down. At best, they are frustrating. At worst, they can cause real serious financial harm.

A fair market depends on clear prices. When prices are not transparent, competition does not work properly. Even the most careful consumer cannot accurately compare products or services and make informed choices in that sort of environment. These are not problems that can be solved by longer terms and conditions. When entire interfaces are engineered to minimise comprehension, adding more fine print, this does not fix the problem. At a certain point, fairness requires a clear rule rather than a longer disclaimer. The result is an environment in which consumers are no longer simply making decisions. They are being steered.

The problem is that many of these practices feel unfair to consumers, yet they are not always clearly captured by existing consumer laws. The Senate Economics Legislation Committee heard that, while some conduct may be unfair, harmful and manipulative, it is not always adequately addressed by existing provisions of the Australian Consumer Law or captured by the high threshold required to establish unconscionable conduct. Witnesses were overwhelmingly supportive of introducing a general prohibition to ensure that sophisticated commercial practices, particularly those involving digital choice architecture, do not fall outside the reach of our consumer protections. I'd like to thank all of those who made submissions and appeared before the committee. Their evidence really has helped demonstrate why these reforms are necessary.

Australia is not acting alone. Comparable jurisdictions around the world are recognising the same problem and responding in similar ways. Europe, India and the United States have all moved to strengthen consumer protections against practices that make cancelling more difficult than subscribing. One example was the United States Federal Trade Commission's complaint against Amazon in 2023 concerning alleged use of dark patterns to encourage consumers to subscribe to Amazon Prime. Just yesterday, the ACCC announced proceedings against Amazon Australia. The ACCC alleges that Amazon Prime introduced advertisements in July 2024 and required consumers to pay an additional $2.99 a month if they wished to continue receiving an ad-free service. As ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said, consumers were effectively left with no choice but to pay more for the product they already had. This is where the bill comes in.

The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026 strengthens the Australian Consumer Law in three important ways. It introduces a general prohibition on unfair trading practices, it addresses subscription traps and it strengthens protections against drip pricing. Together, these reforms ensure consumers are treated fairly and that honest businesses, including small businesses, are not disadvantaged by competitors who rely on tricks, complexity and confusion rather than genuine value and service.

The bill requires businesses to clearly disclose, when a consumer is entering a subscription, what it costs, how long it runs, how it renews and, very importantly, how it can be cancelled. That information must be provided prominently and in a way that is easy to understand. Cancellation must be straightforward. It must be easy to find, it must be easy to do and it must involve only those steps that are reasonably necessary. Importantly, these rules apply not only to consumers but also to standard form subscription contracts entered into by small businesses.

The bill also tackles drip pricing by requiring businesses to disclose all mandatory transaction-based charges at the same time they display the advertised price. With this bill ensuring mandatory fees and charges are clearly visible upfront, consumers will be able to see the true cost of a product or service before making a decision. That means better comparisons, better information and better decisions, and it also means businesses that are already doing the right thing will no longer be disadvantaged by competitors who hide costs until the final stage of a transaction.

To support the implementation of this bill, the ACCC will also develop guidance materials on the operation of the new laws. The government will also undertake a review in the first two years of operation of the subscription provisions to ensure that the protections are working as intended.

This bill focuses on consumer protections, but we know unfair trading practices do not affect only individuals. Small businesses and franchisees often face many of the same vulnerabilities when dealing with large suppliers. The government has already consulted on extending unfair trading protections to small businesses, including those operating within franchising arrangements. These issues matter because consumer protection is ultimately about fairness and transparency. Australians should be protected from misleading conduct and manipulative practices, because competition and fairer markets are essential to addressing cost-of-living pressures.

This bill forms part of the Albanese government's broader agenda to strengthen competition, improve transparency and support consumers. As per the evidence, this bill in particular may save consumers up to $1 billion—money back in their pockets—by saving them from these unfair subscription traps.

We have increased funding for the ACCC by more than $30 million, enabling stronger action against misleading pricing practices, particularly in supermarkets and other consumer-facing markets. We have outlawed unfair contract terms and, for the first time, given the ACCC and ASIC the power to seek penalties against companies that breach those laws. We are strengthening the Unit Pricing Code and cracking down on shrinkflation so consumers can see when product sizes have been reduced, even if the sticker price remains unchanged. We've made the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct mandatory, backed by significant penalties to prevent supermarkets from unfairly using their market power against suppliers and farmers. We've increased the maximum penalties under the Competition and Consumer Act from $10 million to $100 million, because consumer law only works if there are meaningful consequences for businesses that breach it.

Together, these reforms strengthen competition, boost productivity and contribute to a fairer marketplace. Australians should not need extraordinary persistence, endless spare time or specialist knowledge to exercise basic consumer rights. They deserve genuine choice, transparency and a fair go.