Australia’s competitors and client watchdog immediately outlined its enforcement priorities for 2026-27, inserting manipulative on-line practices, deceptive pricing claims in supermarkets and important providers, and anti-competitive conduct on the heart of its agenda. The announcement, made at a Committee for Financial Growth of Australia (CEDA) occasion in Sydney on 19 February 2026, indicators that the Australian Competitors and Client Fee will preserve sustained stress on digital markets whereas additionally scrutinizing motorized vehicle ensures and new government-legislated reforms.
ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb delivered the annual priorities handle. Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “Our priorities are grounded within the understanding that competitors and client belief are very important to a productive, resilient financial system.” The assertion set the tone for what quantities to a broad mandate: press tougher on digital deception, sort out pricing opacity in on a regular basis spending classes, and step up schooling for companies going through new authorized obligations.
Darkish patterns and subscription traps take heart stage
Essentially the most pointed part of the announcement considerations manipulative and false practices in digital markets. The ACCC will particularly goal subscription traps and what the regulator calls “darkish patterns” – interface designs that information shoppers towards choices they may not in any other case make, typically involving hidden prices or troublesome cancellation flows.
Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “This precedence recognises the emergence of practices together with subscription traps and different darkish patterns that manipulate client behaviour and unfairly influence client alternative.” She added that the rise in unsafe client items throughout digital channels, enabled by the dimensions of on-line marketplaces, additionally falls inside this precedence’s scope.
The ACCC’s concern isn’t theoretical. The fee has spent the previous yr constructing enforcement instances on this house. In September 2025, the ACCC filed Federal Court proceedings against JustAnswer LLC, alleging the US-based on-line recommendation service misled Australian shoppers about pricing by promoting an AU$2 becoming a member of payment when month-to-month charges truly ranged between AU$50 and AU$90. A month later, in October 2025, the regulator initiated proceedings against Microsoft Corporation and its Australian subsidiary, claiming Microsoft misled roughly 2.7 million Australians about subscription choices when integrating its Copilot AI assistant into Microsoft 365 plans – allegedly concealing a lower-priced “Traditional” tier to steer shoppers towards dearer AI-integrated choices.
These instances didn’t emerge in isolation. The ACCC’s five-year Digital Platform Providers Inquiry, which concluded in March 2025, produced intensive knowledge on the dimensions of the issue. A survey of over 3,000 Australians found that 72% had encountered potentially unfair practices on online marketplaces within a 12-month period, together with hidden expenses (21%), compelled subscription sign-ups (24%), and unintended paid subscriptions (10%). That inquiry – which ran from 2020 via March 2025 and delivered 35 recommendations to the Australian Authorities – kinds the analytical spine of the 2026-27 priorities.
The advertising group has cause to pay shut consideration. Subscription-based digital providers have turn out to be a dominant mannequin throughout software program, media, and e-commerce. Regulators worldwide are questioning whether or not the technical design of cancellation flows, pricing disclosures, and renewal notifications meets authorized obligations. In Australia, the ACCC has demonstrated it’s going to pursue instances involving each home operators and huge worldwide expertise firms if practices seem to fall in need of the Australian Client Legislation.
Pricing accuracy in supermarkets and important providers
Alongside digital deception, the ACCC has earmarked pricing accuracy in supermarkets and important providers as a seamless precedence. The deal with supermarkets displays persistent cost-of-living pressures in Australia. Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “Correct pricing info is prime to efficient competitors. When low cost claims mislead, shoppers can’t make knowledgeable decisions and companies that observe the foundations could also be deprived.”
This isn’t a brand new concern for the fee, however the framing for 2026-27 extends it particularly to telecommunications and vitality. Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “Important providers, together with telecommunications, electrical energy and gasoline, contain complicated pricing constructions that make it troublesome for shoppers and small companies to match gives and train alternative.” The implication is obvious: the place complexity itself turns into a barrier to knowledgeable decision-making, regulatory scrutiny follows.
In November 2025, the ACCC ran a Black Friday advertising enforcement sweep focusing on deceptive pricing ways together with countdown timers that didn’t correspond to precise sale durations, false site-wide low cost claims, and misleading strikethrough pricing. That sweep constructed on a 2024 enforcement cycle through which Michael Hill, My Home, and Hairhouse every paid penalties for deceptive Black Friday representations. A number of investigations from the 2024 cycle have been nonetheless ongoing when the 2025 sweep started.
For advertisers and entrepreneurs, significantly these working in retail and utilities sectors, the fee’s emphasis on pricing disclosure has direct operational implications. Low cost claims, comparative value promoting, and any promotional communication that means financial savings should be grounded in correct reference costs. The ACCC has persistently argued that retailers who observe the foundations are deprived when opponents use misleading pricing to inflate perceived worth – a aggressive hurt argument in addition to a client hurt argument.
Competitors in digital markets: structural considerations stay
The ACCC’s enduring priorities, which Cass-Gottlieb confirmed will proceed alongside the brand new ones, embody cartel conduct, exclusionary conduct, and the misuse of market energy. These apply with explicit power to digital platform markets, the place the fee has been constructing enforcement capability for years.
In December 2025, the Federal Court ordered Google Asia Pacific to pay A$55 million in penalties for anti-competitive understandings with telecommunications firms Telstra and Optus that required unique pre-installation of Google Search on Android gadgets between December 2019 and March 2021. The case was initiated by the ACCC and represented one of many largest competitors penalties within the regulator’s historical past in opposition to a expertise agency in Australia.
Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “Competitors drives productiveness by incentivising funding, innovation and effectivity. And competitors legislation, and its rigorous enforcement, are necessary contributors to productiveness progress.” The fee will proceed working with Treasury to progress digital competitors reforms, which have been underneath session since December 2024. The proposed digital competitors regime, which drew submissions via February 2025, would give the ACCC new powers to manage massive digital platforms with designated market standing – a framework modeled partly on the UK’s Digital Markets, Competitors and Customers Act and the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
International context for digital competition enforcement has grown considerably. The European Fee has enforced the DMA in opposition to seven designated gatekeepers since 2023. The UK’s Competitors and Markets Authority launched designation investigations focusing on Apple and Google in 2025. Australia’s method, described by authorities as positioning the nation as a “fast-follower,” includes potential mutual recognition mechanisms to cut back regulatory divergence between jurisdictions.
In December 2025, the ACCC also published a comprehensive snapshot of artificial intelligence developments, warning of client dangers from agentic AI techniques, AI-generated faux evaluations, privacy-degrading practices, and deceptive claims about AI capabilities. That doc recognized progress in AI-generated faux evaluations exceeding 1,000% on sure platforms between 2022 and 2025, elevating explicit considerations for e-commerce advertisers who depend on overview indicators for each natural discovery and paid promoting optimization.
Motorized vehicle client ensures
A focused new focus inside the 2026-27 priorities considerations client ensures within the motorized vehicle sector. Accessing client assure rights – the suitable to a treatment when a product fails to satisfy assured requirements – stays probably the most continuously reported points raised with the ACCC. Motor automobiles signify a high-value class the place disputes over assure obligations could be financially vital for shoppers.
Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “Buying a motorized vehicle is likely one of the most important purchases that many shoppers will make, and when a difficulty arises with their automobile that’s coated by client ensures then companies should meet their obligation to fulfil this fundamental client proper.” The ACCC’s method for 2026-27 contains “exploring totally different approaches to attain compliance, together with working collaboratively with business to ship adjustments for the good thing about shoppers.”
This indicators a desire for cooperative compliance mechanisms earlier than transferring to formal enforcement – a sample the ACCC has utilized in different sectors to attain sooner systemic change than litigation alone permits.
New authorities reforms require compliance schooling
Over the previous yr, the Australian Authorities introduced a number of vital reforms touching areas of direct relevance to companies and entrepreneurs. These embody a brand new obligatory merger notification regime that took impact 1 January 2026, unfair buying and selling practices protections that may embody prohibitions on subscription traps and manipulative on-line practices, and the Scams Prevention Framework Act 2025, which established the Nationwide Anti-Rip-off Centre inside the ACCC.
The ACCC’s response to those reforms for 2026-27 is an specific dedication to schooling and compliance exercise, not simply enforcement. Based on Cass-Gottlieb, “We welcome the suite of reforms which have been introduced and can proactively interact with companies to advertise compliance and guarantee they perceive their obligations as these reforms come into impact.” She added that whereas bettering enterprise compliance stays the precedence, noticed non-compliance would immediate consideration of probably the most applicable enforcement device.
For digital entrepreneurs and promoting expertise operators, a number of of those reforms carry operational weight. The unfair buying and selling practices prohibitions, as soon as enacted, will codify restrictions on subscription traps and darkish patterns that the ACCC has already been pursuing underneath present deceptive conduct provisions. Companies working subscription-based promoting instruments, viewers knowledge platforms, or any service with automated renewal constructions in Australia must assess their present flows in opposition to each present legislation and the anticipated legislative adjustments.
The brand new merger regime creates a compulsory notification obligation for acquisitions assembly specified thresholds, with the ACCC as the first decision-maker fairly than the Australian Competitors Tribunal. Acquisitions by main promoting expertise platforms, given the dimensions of their Australian revenues, are more likely to meet notification necessities. The Treasury has dedicated to reviewing threshold ranges twelve months after implementation.
What this implies for digital promoting
Australia’s digital promoting market reached A$17.2 billion in monetary yr 2025, according to industry data, with video promoting rising practically 22% and search promoting sustaining steady efficiency. In opposition to this industrial backdrop, the ACCC’s enforcement priorities form the regulatory surroundings inside which programmatic promoting, platform promoting, and consumer-facing digital providers function.
Entrepreneurs working campaigns on digital platforms face an surroundings the place the platforms themselves are underneath regulatory scrutiny for his or her remedy of shoppers and enterprise customers. Instances in opposition to Google for search exclusivity, instances in opposition to Microsoft for subscription manipulation, and the broader deal with darkish patterns create a context through which transparency isn’t optionally available. Correct pricing, clear subscription phrases, and truthful low cost claims will not be simply authorized necessities – they’re more and more areas the place regulators are ready to litigate.
The ACCC’s assertion that “markets solely ship when individuals belief them” frames the enforcement agenda as essentially linked to market operate. With out belief, in accordance with the regulator’s logic, competitors can’t ship its full advantages. That framing has direct implications for a way promoting itself is performed. Deceptive promotional claims don’t merely hurt particular person shoppers – they distort the aggressive dynamics that make markets work.
Timeline
Abstract
Who: The Australian Competitors and Client Fee, led by Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, introduced its 2026-27 compliance and enforcement priorities. The announcement was made at a Committee for Financial Growth of Australia occasion in Sydney.
What: The ACCC set 4 headline precedence areas for the yr forward – manipulative and false on-line practices together with subscription traps and darkish patterns; correct pricing in supermarkets and important providers reminiscent of vitality and telecommunications; client ensures within the motorized vehicle sector; and schooling and compliance work for companies going through new authorities reforms together with the merger regime, unfair buying and selling practices legal guidelines, and the Scams Prevention Framework Act 2025.
When: The announcement was made on 19 February 2026, with the priorities making use of to the 2026-27 monetary yr.
The place: The announcement was made at a CEDA occasion in Sydney, Australia. The enforcement priorities apply throughout the Australian market, masking home and worldwide companies working in digital markets, retail, important providers, and motor automobiles.
Why: The priorities replicate persistent client complaints about cost-of-living pressures, conduct undermining belief in digital markets, and restrictions on competitors. They construct on 5 years of Digital Platform Providers Inquiry findings, current enforcement actions in opposition to main expertise firms, and new authorities laws requiring enterprise schooling and compliance work.
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