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Coming full circle: Closing Loopholes No 2 reinstates the common law tests
On 7 December 2023, Parliament passed the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes Act 2023),
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Australia | Publication | January 2022
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will soon be revealing its new compliance and enforcement priorities for the coming year, but one trend we are expecting to see continue into 2022 is increasing penalties for breaches of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL).
Last year we saw some record-breaking penalties for breaches of the ACL – most recently in the ACCC’s proceedings against the Australian Institute of Professional Education Pty Ltd (AIPE). In that case, the Federal Court awarded an unprecedented $153 million penalty against the private college for engaging in unconscionable conduct when enrolling consumers into online diploma courses, which targeted vulnerable members of the community.
The AIPE decision is one of a number of recent decisions showing the trajectory of higher penalties for ACL breaches over 2021, including notably:
ACCC Chair, Rod Sims, has publicly stated that one of the goals of the agency is to build on higher ACL penalties, which have been available since 2018. The penalty regime introduced in 2018 increased the maximum penalty for a contravention of the ACL by corporations to the greater of $10 million, three times the value of any benefit, or where the benefit cannot be calculated, 10% of annual turnover in the preceding 12 months – up from a previous maximum of $1.1 million per contravention. Penalties for individuals were also increased to a maximum of $500,000 per breach (previously $220,000). Rod is retiring as the ACCC Chair on 21 March 2022 after a decade in the role and will be replaced by Gina Cass-Gottlieb. Given Gina’s background as a high-profile competition litigator, we expect the enforcement focus of the ACCC may well increase.
So what are some of the lessons can be learnt from the ACCC’s recent ACL penalty successes?
This update was prepared by Zoe Lonard, Special Counsel, assisted by Victoria Hoon, Lawyer.
Publication
On 7 December 2023, Parliament passed the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes Act 2023),
Publication
Starting in 2022, the Government of Canada has introduced three waves of amendments to the Competition Act (Act) resulting in the most significant revisions to Canada’s competition laws in over a decade.
Publication
Since January 1, 2024, federal legislation in Canada requires companies of a certain size that produce, sell, distribute or import goods into Canada to file a report by May 31 each year regarding the risks of forced labour and child labour in their business and supply chains and the efforts taken to reduce those risks.
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