Making it count: National Consumer Congress 2026

Acknowledgements and introduction

Good morning and welcome to National Consumer Congress 2026 and the launch of the ACCC's 2026/27 Product Safety Priorities.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waterways and skies across Australia. I pay my respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, on whose Country we meet, and to their Elders past and present. I also extend my respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.

Thank you to Craig Madden for delivering a thoughtful welcome to country today.

I would also like to thank Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh for providing his recorded remarks. AM Leigh is a keen advocate for consumers, and it is always a privilege to hear his reflections at this event.

Finally, I’d also like to acknowledge and thank the ACCC working group and Steph Tonkin from the Consumer Action Law Centre, Chandni Gupta from the Consumer Policy Research Centre, Andy Kelly from CHOICE, and Gareth Downing from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network for planning today’s event. Congress is a truly collaborative effort, and we deeply appreciate your work.

In the year since our last Congress, consumers have faced continuing cost of living pressures. Recent ABS data shows living costs rose across all household types,^[1] and more households experienced financial stress and cashflow problems in 2025 compared to the year before.^[2]

We’ve seen digital markets continue to expand and reshape how goods and services are supplied. New technologies and products are increasingly becoming part of everyday life. And the pace of change is showing no sign of slowing.

Against this backdrop of financial pressure and rapid change, consumer trust has never mattered more.

Consumers expect the products and services they buy to be reliable, safe and accurately represented. They expect competition to deliver affordable, innovative, high-quality goods and services and meaningful choice. And they expect their rights to be honoured.

When consumers trust those expectations will be met, they participate confidently. They reward innovation and superior services through their purchases, and they switch providers to get a better deal. And businesses respond by further innovating and improving their efficiency and productivity to deliver better products, better services and better prices.

Conversely, where conduct erodes trust consumers disengage, and businesses that compete on merit are placed at a disadvantage.

Importantly, consumers should not have to choose between affordability and safety – particularly at a time when many households are already under financial pressure.

Whether it’s an unsafe household product, misleading advertising, manipulative digital design, or a service that fails to deliver on basic expectations – these harms have real consequences. For health, for household finances, for consumer confidence and wellbeing, and for broader economic activity.

That brings me to the theme of Congress this year: Making it count: what does it take to achieve real change?

This theme asks us to consider the practical implications of our work and the impact for consumers. How do we ensure our work delivers meaningful outcomes? Today I would like to explore that question through the lens of the ACCC’s work.

First, we make our focus count by being clear about our annual priorities and acting on them.

Second, we make our interventions count by using the right tools to achieve outcomes.

And third, we make our insights count by grounding our decisions and actions in evidence, data and the lived experience of the consumers we serve.

Making our focus count

I will begin with making our focus count.

At the ACCC, we are deliberate about the actions we take to respond to emerging issues, where trust is being undermined and harm is most acute.

We cannot pursue every matter that comes to our attention, and this is so for product safety matters as well. So, each year we set priorities to target the highest priority risks posed by unsafe consumer goods and to raise public awareness. And in the year ahead, we are making our focus count by prioritising four key product safety concerns.

Product safety priority: E‑micromobility devices

I will begin with our priority focusing on product safety issues with e-micromobility devices (EMDs) such as e-bikes and e-scooters.

In just a few years, e-bikes and scooters have shifted from novelty recreational devices to part of the everyday transport mix. Data from the New South Wales government shows that 34% of e-riders in Greater Sydney would otherwise have made their trip by car. This increases to 45% in regional NSW.^[3] That’s a meaningful contribution to mobility, access, affordability and choice – and to reducing traffic congestion and transport emissions.

But as use has grown, so have safety incidents.

In 2025, 14 people lost their lives in e-bike or scooter accidents on Queensland roads alone.^[4] Emergency department presentations involving these devices in Queensland increased by 23% compared to 2024, and 45% compared to the previous year.^[5] At St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, serious injuries involving e-bikes doubled.^[6]

Alongside rider safety, there is a serious and growing risk from the lithium-ion batteries that power these devices. Five people in Australia have lost their lives in lithium-ion battery fires linked to e-bikes or scooters in recent years.^[7]

These are not abstract risks. They are showing up in emergency departments, in coronial findings, and in the concerns raised consistently by injury surveillance units, government agencies, the Pedestrian Council of Australia, and product safety experts across the country.

In response, the Australian government committed significant funding as part of a $6.6 million package to the ACCC and Treasury over three years (2026-27 to 2028-29) to focus on developing nationally consistent standards for all e-micromobility devices.

Our focus will be on speed and power limits, battery safety, and clearer information requirements for consumers.

This work will form just one part of many programs aimed at improving the safety of these devices. Infrastructure, road use rules, and transport policy all have a role to play – and other regulators and agencies are actively working in this space.

Product safety priority: mandatory product safety standards

In the year ahead, we will also prioritise updating mandatory standards – to improve safety, broaden choice and lower costs for consumers.

This priority carries over from 2025-26, and our work in this space continues in the year ahead.

Our focus is on implementing changes to the mandatory standard framework that were introduced in December 2024. Those changes allow mandatory standards to reference overseas, or voluntary Australian standards as they exist from time-to-time – meaning that as those standards are updated, Australian requirements can keep pace automatically, without needing to go through a separate regulatory process each time.

This might sound like technical machinery – and it is. But it matters enormously.

Product design evolves. Technology changes. Global markets shift. Keeping our mandatory standards current and consistent with international best practice is foundational to how consumer safety works in practice.

It also matters for businesses. When Australian requirements are harmonised with international standards, businesses operating across multiple jurisdictions face less complexity and lower compliance costs. And when compliance is easier and less costly, those benefits flow through – to greater competition, improved efficiency, wider product choice, and ultimately lower prices for consumers.

For consumers, the impact is straightforward: they can buy with confidence, knowing that the products available to them reflect current safety thinking, here and around the world.

This is the kind of systemic, regulatory infrastructure-level work that doesn’t always attract headlines – but its effects are felt across markets and product categories. It is change that compounds. And that supports making our focus count at scale and over time.

Product safety priority: young children

The safety of young children – with a focus on compliance with button battery, infant sleep and toppling furniture mandatory standards is also a priority.

Button batteries remain a serious hazard facing young children. Small, shiny and easily swallowed, they can cause catastrophic injury within hours. Our work here will focus on identifying and addressing systemic non-compliance – through enforcement to drive broader deterrence and raise consumer awareness.

For toppling furniture and infant sleep products, where updated mandatory standards are relatively recent, our focus will be on promoting compliance and working collaboratively with state and territory regulators to identify and address any non-compliance as it emerges.

Product safety priority: digital markets

Our final priority in the year ahead is on strengthening product safety in digital markets. This focus reflects that an increasing share of products Australians buy are purchased online. Australians collectively spent $82.6 billion shopping online in last year, an increase of 14% from 2024.^[8]

As more Australians shop on large platforms hosting thousands of third-party sellers, real challenges for product safety exist.

In response, we are continuing to engage with online businesses and marketplaces to encourage them to take proactive responsibility for the safety of products they supply and that are supplied through their platforms. To not simply act as a neutral intermediary, but to be an active participant in keeping unsafe products out of the market.

We will use awareness raising, regulatory intervention and compliance and enforcement, where appropriate, with a focus on systemic conduct.

We will also continue our work to strengthen commitments under the Product Safety Pledge, assessing whether existing commitments remain effective and whether the pledge should be extended to additional online marketplaces.

And because unsafe products online are not a uniquely Australian problem, we will continue to work with regulators across Australia and internationally to better understand sources of supply and tackle the cross-border sale of unsafe products.

This priority connects to the broader work of the government to strengthen the product safety framework – ensuring that our regulatory tools keep pace with the markets they are designed to protect.

Our continuing focus on this as a compliance and enforcement priority, will also be of interest for consumer groups. Earlier this month, CHOICE made a designated complaint to the ACCC raising concerns about the sale of unsafe products online. We will carefully consider the issues raised by CHOICE and provide a public response.

Making our interventions count: using the right tools and responses

Setting priorities is how we make our focus count. But focus without effective action is just intention. So let me turn now to the second part of making it count: using the right tools and responses to achieve real outcomes for consumers.

The ACCC takes a flexible, proportionate and proactive approach to consumer law and product safety regulation – because not every risk or harm calls for the same response.

We use a combination of education, market surveillance, recalls, regulatory interventions, compliance and enforcement action tailored to the nature and severity of the conduct.

The goal is always achieving meaningful outcomes: for the consumers directly affected, and for broader industry awareness and compliance.

Let me share some examples from the past year that illustrate what that looks like in practice.

Where harm is serious and conduct is egregious, we pursue enforcement outcomes to support deterrence. For example, last year, the Federal Court imposed a $14 million penalty on City Beach for supplying products that failed to comply with mandatory button battery safety standards.

We also took action against Amazon Australia for kids backpacks on its online marketplace which we allege failed to comply with mandatory button battery warning requirements. This is the first Federal Court case brought by the ACCC against an online marketplace alleging non-compliance with mandatory product safety standards.

In addition, we issued infringement notices to – and accepted court-enforceable undertakings from – The Wiggles and Hungry Jacks for supplying products without required button battery warnings. This included the creation by The Wiggles of a podcast episode for parents to help raise awareness about button battery safety.

These cases span retail, licensed merchandise and promotional products – a reminder that product safety obligations reach across the entire supply chain, and the importance of compliance across retail, promotional and licensed merchandise.

More recently, we have been investigating the supply of banned and potentially deadly toys and games containing small high-powered magnets, including ‘magnetic chess’ or ‘magnetic battle chess’ style games being sold to Australian consumers online.

We have issued take down requests to Amazon, eBay, Kogan, and Fruugo for the affected listings and sought additional measures to be taken to prevent sellers relisting the same or similar products. Amazon, eBay, Kogan, and Fruugo have committed to taking these actions and to contacting affected customers to warn them about the safety risks, with some marketplaces also committing to refund affected consumers.

Effective intervention doesn’t always require litigation. As I noted earlier, through the Australian Product Safety Pledge, we work directly with online marketplaces to improve the safety of products available through their platforms – operating beyond the current boundaries of the ACL to achieve practical outcomes at scale.

Similarly, our work on ghost stores – where we issued consumer warnings and engaged directly with platforms like Shopify to disrupt the misconduct – shows how targeted, timely action can protect consumers without the time and cost of formal enforcement proceedings, or where formal enforcement proceedings may not have been effective.

We also invest significantly in raising awareness – with consumers and with industry. Our quadbike safety campaign and work on the ban of baby self-feeding devices are recent examples of public education, informed by stakeholder insights, where we have worked to raise awareness to prevent harm before it occurs in a way that meets people where they are –a key to real impact.

One of the more instructive examples of targeted compliance engagement in the past year is our work in the NDIS space. We identified that some operators were falsely claiming goods and services to be “NDIS approved” – potentially misleading consumers living with disability about their eligibility for NDIS funding.

Through targeted compliance engagement, we were able to leverage outcomes with a small number of businesses to send a clear message to the broader sector, supported by media engagement and resources designed to educate businesses and NDIS participants about their rights and obligations.

Taken together, these examples reflect a deliberate approach: matching the intervention to the risk and making sure that every action we take – whether enforcement action leading to penalties or take down requests and consumer warnings – is designed to count beyond the individual case.

Making our insights count

Underpinning all of this – our priority setting and our interventions – is data and intelligence. Data enables action, it helps target high‑risk and high harm products, improves recall and compliance outcomes and strengthens regulatory decisions. This is how we know where to act and whether we are making a difference.

To identify product safety hazards and assess the scale of risk, we draw on a wide range of sources: consumer reports through our Infocentre, mandatory business reports, market surveillance, voluntary recalls, media monitoring and social listening, and a broad network of regulators, injury surveillance units, fire safety bodies, consumer groups and researchers. No single source tells the whole story – it’s the connections between them that give us the clearest picture of where harm is occurring and what response is warranted.

Conclusion

That’s why we are investing in our data and digital capability, and why collaboration – across government, across the consumer movement, across sectors, and across borders – is so important.

And on that point, I would like to finish today by acknowledging that the ACCC does not do this work alone.

The theme of this Congress – making it count – calls us to deliver outcomes that make real, positive and lasting impacts. That is hard work. It requires focus, evidence, action, evaluation, and often further action. It also requires a community of people who can provide insights to ensure that actions deliver meaningful outcomes, and who believe that the effort is worth it.

I thank each of you here in this room for the important work you do, and the contributions you make to this community. And I look forward to continuing our work together and to truly making it count.

Thank you.