Australia just banned unfair trading. Your website has until 1 July 2027.

What just happened

On 1 April 2026 the federal government introduced the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026, describing it as a crackdown on "business tactics that rely on confusion, design tricks, needless friction or sheer consumer exhaustion" (Treasury media release, 1 April 2026). The Bill passed both Houses of Parliament in early July 2026.

The important part for you: the new rules do not apply yet. They take effect from 1 July 2027, giving every Australian business a twelve-month window to review how their website sells, prices and signs people up (Ashurst). That's not a reason to relax — it's the reason this is the right month to look, while changes are cheap and unhurried.

The three things it targets

The law does three concrete things, and each one lives on a page of your website. For each: what it is, why it matters to your business, and how to get ahead of it.

1. Subscription traps

What it is. Services that are easy to join and deliberately hard to leave — buried cancellation options, cancellation only by phone when sign-up was one click, or automatic renewals that arrive without warning. The law doesn't ban subscriptions; it targets the trap, not the model (SmartCompany).

Why it matters to your business. If you sell anything on a recurring basis — memberships, retainers, boxes, software, classes — your renewal and cancellation flow is now regulated territory. Breaches will sit under the Australian Consumer Law's civil penalty regime, and the government has raised maximum penalties under competition and consumer law to $100 million precisely so they can't be treated as a cost of doing business (Treasury). No small business will face anything like that ceiling — but the same regime scales down to penalties that would still hurt badly.

How to get ahead of it. Cancel your own subscription this week, from your phone, as a customer would. Count the clicks against sign-up. If cancelling is meaningfully harder than joining, that gap is the thing to fix. Then check that renewal reminders actually go out before you charge — legal commentators expect clear disclosure, renewal notices and easy cancellation to be the practical baseline (Gilbert + Tobin).

2. Hidden fees and drip pricing

What it is. "Drip pricing" is when the price grows as the customer moves through checkout — a card surcharge here, a booking fee there — so the total only appears at the final screen. The new law requires businesses to be upfront about whether transaction-based charges apply and whether the displayed price includes them (Gilbert + Tobin).

Why it matters to your business. Beyond the legal risk, drip pricing is where carts go to die — the final-screen surprise is a classic abandonment trigger. Fixing it is one of the rare compliance jobs that usually improves conversion rather than costing it.

How to get ahead of it. Walk your own checkout and write down every fee, surcharge and add-on, and the screen where each first appears. Anything that first shows up at the last step should move to where the price is first displayed. If you pass on card surcharges, say so next to the price — not next to the Pay button.

3. Manipulative design — "dark patterns"

What it is. The Bill adds a general prohibition on conduct that manipulates a consumer, or unreasonably distorts the environment in which they make a decision, where that causes (or is likely to cause) detriment (Gilbert + Tobin). In website terms: countdown timers that aren't real, "only 2 left!" that isn't true, pre-ticked boxes, and designs that nudge people toward choices they didn't mean to make.

Why it matters to your business. This is the part with the fuzziest edge — conduct that's technically lawful today could be captured if it manipulates decision-making. And the regulator is already looking in this direction: the ACCC has named manipulative conduct in the digital economy among its 2026–27 compliance and enforcement priorities (Norton Rose Fulbright).

How to get ahead of it. The honest test is simple: is the thing on the screen true? If a timer restarts on refresh, remove it. If stock counters aren't fed by real stock, remove them. If a newsletter box is pre-ticked, untick it — that one isn't even a 2027 problem, because under the Spam Act consent already has to be an active choice today.

What's already law today

It would be a mistake to file all of this under "2027 problem." Several close cousins of these rules are in force right now:

• Consumer guarantees can't be signed away. Blanket "no refunds" or "all sales are final" wording can be unlawful today, because the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law apply regardless of what your terms say.
• Misleading or deceptive conduct is already prohibited. A fake countdown timer or invented scarcity claim doesn't need the 2027 law to be a problem — it can already breach the existing ACL.
• Marketing consent must already be an active choice. Pre-ticked sign-up boxes have been a Spam Act issue for years.

One more development worth knowing about: the government has also been consulting on extending these unfair-trading protections to small businesses as the protected party — covering situations where a larger company uses the same tricks against a smaller one (Gilbert + Tobin). If that proceeds, this law may end up protecting you as often as it obliges you.

A 20-minute self-check for this week