What is the Australian Consumer Law?

The core is the consumer guarantees. Goods must be of acceptable quality, fit for any purpose you made known, match their description or sample, and come with spare parts and repairs available for a reasonable time; services must be done with due care and skill, within a reasonable time. If a guarantee is not met, the remedy depends on the failure: a major failure lets you reject the goods for a refund or replacement, a minor one entitles you to a repair.

Around the guarantees sit bans on misleading or deceptive conduct, unconscionable conduct and unfair terms in standard form contracts, rules on product safety and recalls, and prohibitions on practices such as pyramid selling and harassment. Recent amendments have added rules on subscription traps and hidden fees.

A ute bought from a dealer, a coffee machine from a supplier or an excavator from a distributor all carry the consumer guarantees, and they apply on top of any manufacturer's warranty. A sign saying no refunds, or a contract clause saying sold as is, does not remove them. Purchases for business use are covered when they fall under the ACL's dollar threshold or are the kind of goods normally bought for personal use.

The finance is a separate contract. If a financed vehicle turns out to be faulty, the claim goes to the dealer or manufacturer under the guarantees, while the car loan or chattel mortgage keeps running. Private sales are different again: a private seller only guarantees they have the right to sell.

Credit and insurance are carved out of the ACL and covered by equivalent provisions in the ASIC Act, which ASIC enforces, alongside the NCCP rules on responsible lending. In practice the protections look the same: a lender or broker must not mislead you, must quote a comparison rate in advertising, and cannot rely on unfair terms in a standard form loan contract.

The unfair contract terms regime now carries penalties and extends to small business contracts, which catches many standard equipment finance and hire agreements. A term that lets one side vary the deal at will, or lock the other side in without a matching right, is the kind of clause the regulators target. Brokers who hold an Australian credit licence are expected to know both sets of rules.