As the year draws to an end, we reflect on the ACCC’s compliance and enforcement priorities for 2025-26 and consider the actions taken by the ACCC in furtherance of its priorities.
The ACCC’s activities in 2025 showed a regulator leaning into its full toolkit – litigation, court-enforceable undertakings, infringement notices, sector inquiries, guidance and advocacy – to target the 2025-26 priorities that the Chair announced in February. See our article summarising the 2025-26 ACCC priorities here.
Beyond enforcement actions, the ACCC also prepared for a historic shift in merger control, while pursuing targeted policy initiatives on pricing practices, greenwashing, unfair contract terms and surcharging.
Penalties and outcomes recorded across competition and consumer matters this year underscore the emphasis on issues that impact the cost of living and the competitive process across the retail, essential services, construction and digital sectors. This year’s activities make clear that while the ACCC continues to have a large appetite for court enforcement action and advocacy for reform, there is an increasing willingness to deploy tools where they quickly restore competition or protect consumers.
Key ACCC action relating to its enforcement priorities
- Supermarket and retail – the ACCC pursued both enforcement actions and policy activities in the supermarket and retail sectors in 2025, having commenced cartel proceedings against four fresh produce suppliers and released the final report of its supermarkets inquiry, which contained recommendations focused on the activities of Australia’s largest supermarkets. The government has also focused on supermarkets, with a new ban on excessive pricing of groceries commencing on 1 July 2026.
- Essential Services (Energy, Telecommunications, and Digital Platforms) – the ACCC similarly leveraged litigated and non-litigated strategies in essential services sectors. It accepted a range of court-enforceable undertakings in the telecommunications industry (such as, from Optus, to provide redress to consumers harmed by certain sales conduct), granted public benefit authorisations to renewable energy and waste management businesses and continued to release reports across both the energy and digital sectors.
- Cartel and misuse of market power – the ACCC’s cartel enforcement program this year targeted the ‘core of markets that matter to Australians,’ with action being taken in the grocery, construction and infrastructure sectors.
- See here for our round up of ACCC enforcement of cartel cases in 2025.
- Misleading surcharging practices and other add-on costs – the ACCC has taken various actions in relation to this enforcement priority (see here for our commentary on the ACCC’s track record on transparent pricing), including:
- issuing infringement notices with penalty consequences against businesses (such as Dendy Cinema) for drip pricing (failing to show the total price of a product as a single figure);
- obtaining court outcomes in relation to false or misleading statements concerning prices (such as the $9 million penalty against Webjet); and
- publishing guidance for businesses in relation to the ban on excessive card payment surcharges. The ACCC has also warned that it will continue to monitor business compliance with existing surcharging laws and take appropriate enforcement action if necessary.
- Unfair trading practices and unfair contract terms – over previous years, the ACCC has supported strengthening unfair contract term protections and related reforms and its actions in 2025 continued to reflect this priority.
- In its December 2024 submission to the Treasury’s consultation concerning unfair trading practices, the ACCC expressed its strong support for the government’s proposal to amend the Australian Consumer Law to introduce a general prohibition against unfair trading practices. The ACCC considered that the current protections in the ACL are insufficient to protect consumers from harm and recommended the government introduce related reforms to target specific practices concerning subscriptions and drip pricing.
- The ACCC’s focus on unfair pricing practices, particularly subscription and cancellation terms, is also reflected in its court actions this year. The ACCC most recently commenced proceedings against HelloFresh and Youfoodz for alleged subscription traps.
- Greenwashing – the ACCC continued to pursue greenwashing investigations across sectors, reflecting its focus on addressing the negative impacts of greenwashing on trust, competitive dynamics and the allocation of consumer spend.
- In April this year, the ACCC obtained a penalty against Clorox Australia for false or misleading representations that its garbage bags were partly made of recycled ‘ocean plastic.’
- In December 2024, the ACCC published its guidance on sustainability collaborations for businesses. See here for our recap on the guidance and key learnings.
- Product safety – button battery standards enforcement was a focal point for the ACCC in 2025, with the ACCC taking action against non-compliance with these standards given the significant risks of injury to consumers. The ACCC obtained a judgment against City Beach for selling products that did not comply with mandatory button safety standards and accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from The Wiggles arising out of its sale of Emma Bow headbands without mandatory button battery safety warnings.
- See here for our discussion of the ACCC’s proceedings against City Beach and other enforcement actions in relation to product safety issues.
Takeaways
For the ACCC, 2025 demonstrated coherence between its words and actions. High impact cases combined with strong advocacy reflected the ACCC’s focus on key sectors to achieve the greatest impact on consumer welfare in Australia, whilst the penalties and court outcomes recorded for the ACCC also demonstrate its continuing pursuit of deterrence and consumer redress.
The practical takeaways for businesses in 2026 are straightforward: pressure-test pricing and promotional strategies and representations, audit contract terms for UCT exposure, ensure surcharging practices align with upfront total-price disclosure requirements and if a compliance issue arises, engage early to maximise the prospects of a non-litigated outcome. The ACCC has signposted where it will look, and 2025 shows that it is acting in those places.
