Product safety priorities

Product safety priorities 2023-24

Consumers expect the products they purchase to be safe. Unsafe products in the market can pose safety risks to the community, including injury, property damage or even death. Each year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) identifies priorities to minimise and raise awareness of the risks posed by unsafe consumer goods.

In 2023–24, the ACCC’s key areas of focus include:

	Young children’s product safety: encompassing compliance, enforcement, and education initiatives focused on consumer products such as sleep aids, toys for children under 3 (including wooden toys such as rattles and teethers), products containing button batteries and toppling furniture.
	Infant sleep: implementing strategies to prevent injuries and deaths associated with infant sleep products (including inclined products).
	Product safety online: strengthening product safety online including through the use of technology by online marketplaces to detect and prevent unsafe product listings online, and best practices to reduce safety risks from second-hand goods sold online.
	Sustainability and maintaining product safety: supporting Australia’s transition to a sustainable economy including through education and awareness raising.

The ACCC may also pursue other product safety risks which have the potential to cause serious harm to consumers. We will also seek to inform stakeholders about, and ensure compliance with, any new bans or mandatory standards that are introduced, or any significant changes made to existing bans or mandatory standards.

Introduction

The Australian product safety system relies on consumers, businesses and government working together to manage the safety of goods. This policy sets out the principles adopted by the ACCC for prioritising and addressing product safety risks.

ACCC product safety strategy

The ACCC is an independent Commonwealth statutory agency that promotes competition, fair trading and product safety for the benefit of consumers, businesses and the Australian community. The primary responsibilities of the ACCC are to enforce compliance with the competition, consumer protection, fair trading and product safety provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA), regulate national infrastructure and undertake market studies.

The Australian Consumer Law (ACL), set out in a schedule to the CCA, governs consumer protection and fair trading, including the safety of consumer goods. Regulation and administration of the ACL is a shared responsibility between the ACCC and state and territory regulators (ACL regulators).

State and territory ACL regulators have endorsed the 2023–24 Product Safety Priorities as national priorities. The ACCC will work closely with state and territory ACL regulators on many of these priorities.

The ACCC publishes an annual Compliance and enforcement policy outlining the ACCC’s approach to its enforcement functions under the CCA and other legislation. The Product Safety Priorities complement the Compliance and Enforcement Policy by setting out how the ACCC approaches its product safety role under the ACL.

Core functions

Core functions are ongoing product safety regulatory activities that the ACCC undertakes in addition to the Product Safety Priorities. These include:

negotiating, assessing and monitoring the effectiveness of voluntary recalls and communicating product safety risks to consumers
reviewing and updating mandatory safety standards and bans and conducting surveillance
conducting hazard assessments of emerging product safety issues, including monitoring safety hazards associated with new technologies
engaging with key stakeholders on product safety, focusing on education about any new safety standards introduced
advocating for reform to improve the effectiveness of the product safety framework
improving product safety data by exploring short and long-term data solutions, including examination of other data sources that could be accessed to supplement the product safety data already collected by the ACCC
taking enforcement action for non-compliance with product safety obligations where appropriate.

When carrying out its core functions, the ACCC employs 3 integrated strategies to direct the ACCC’s resources to have the most impact on product safety risks: identification, prioritisation and management.

Risk identification

To identify product safety hazards and assess the size of the risk, the ACCC collects data from a range of sources, including:

consumer reports made to the ACCC via the ACCC’s Infocentre
mandatory reports made by businesses under sections 131 and 132 of the ACL
voluntary supplier reports made by businesses when the mandatory reporting thresholds have not been met but where, with a slight change in circumstances, a death, serious injury or illness may have occurred (a 'near miss')
voluntary recalls notified by businesses under section 128 of the ACL
market surveillance to identify non-compliant or unsafe products
information from other ACL regulators
networks of consumer, business, government and other organisations, including injury surveillance groups
media monitoring of news sources and other government or organisation publications and media statements
international networks, including through active participation in the OECD Working Party for Consumer Product Safety which is chaired by Australia and led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and participation in International Product Safety week, a biennial forum hosted by the European Commission that brings together product safety expertise from across government and industry worldwide.

Risk prioritisation

The ACCC cannot pursue all product safety matters that come to its attention. The ACCC uses data to identify the most significant product safety risks and uses priority factors to determine the nature and timing of interventions to manage those risks.

The priority factors are:

there is a high risk to public safety due to the severity and/or number of injuries that may result from the product (such as an unsafe product likely to cause death or significant harm, or being widely available to consumers)
users are unable to perceive or safeguard against the risk of the product, such as where it is difficult to detect the safety risk or identify a link between the product and possibility of injury
product is targeted at vulnerable users, such as children
users of the product potentially expose other people to the risk of death or injury
the product is subject to a safety standard, compulsory recall, ban or safety warning under the ACL
ACCC action is likely to have a broader public benefit. For example, where action is likely to have a broader educative or deterrent effect or the source of harm is likely to become widespread if the ACCC does not intervene.

The ACCC also prioritises product safety risks where there is widespread community concern. For these matters, the ACCC undertakes initial enquiries to assess whether the product safety risk meets the priority factors.

In assessing the likelihood and severity of injury, the ACCC considers reports of past incidents in Australia and overseas. The ACCC also draws on market surveillance and expert technical advice to identify emerging risks and respond quickly to prevent deaths and injuries.

Risk management

A range of strategies are used to manage risk, these include:

Regulation under the ACL. The ACCC is responsible for making recommendations to the Commonwealth Minister on safety standards, bans, compulsory recalls, safety warning notices and information standards, and for administering voluntary recall notices.
Compliance and enforcement under the ACL. The ACCC and ACL regulators are responsible for:
- educating traders about the ACL provisions relating to the consumer guarantee of acceptable quality as to safety and liability for products with safety defects
- enforcing ACL provisions prohibiting false or misleading representations, which include representations as to the safety of a product
- raising awareness of, and monitoring and enforcing compliance with, product safety obligations and regulatory interventions under the ACL, such as compulsory recalls, mandatory safety standards and product bans.
Working with other Australian regulators. Different government agencies are responsible for regulating the safety of specific types of products such as motor vehicles, food, building materials, medicines and therapeutic goods, tobacco, and electrical and gas appliances. When a product does not easily fit within the scope of a particular regulator, agencies will work together to find the best way to manage its safety.
International cooperation. The ACCC works with international counterparts to identify and address emerging product safety risks.

How the ACCC addresses product safety risks

As outlined in the Compliance and Enforcement Policy, the ACCC draws on a range of strategies to address consumer harm, including:

working with industry to manage risk, including through voluntary recalls
compliance activities such as education and campaigns, industry engagement, research and advocacy, and working with small business to improve product safety awareness
enforcement action such as administrative resolutions, infringement notices, enforceable undertakings and court cases
research activities and market studies
working with other agencies.

For consumer product safety, the ACCC is also responsible under the ACL for administering provisions for voluntary recall notices and making recommendations to the Commonwealth Minister to:

publish a safety warning notice that a particular product is under investigation or warning of possible risks of a product
make an information standard requiring particular information to be supplied with the product
make a safety standard setting out requirements for the product
make an interim or permanent ban on the product
require businesses to recall the product.

In performing this work, the ACCC is governed by the principles set out in the Compliance and Enforcement Policy: accountability; transparency; confidentiality; timeliness; proportionality; and fairness.

The appropriate strategy to address consumer harm will depend on the particular product safety risk. In developing a strategy to address a product safety risk, the ACCC is guided by the following principles:

The ACCC’s response should be efficient and effective in managing the risk.
The ACCC’s response, including the compliance burden imposed on business, should be proportionate to the risk.
A regulatory response should, in general, avoid restricting consumer choice or limiting technological solutions. However, in some cases, the most appropriate option to address a risk will be to ban the product or mandate standards for design, manufacture or particular information to be supplied with the product.
The ACCC reviews its priorities each year as part of its Compliance and Enforcement Policy. Product safety areas of focus for this year are set out at the front of this policy.

Implementing the 2023–24 Product Safety Priorities

This section outlines some of the important work that the ACCC will undertake this year to implement each of the priorities.

	Young children’s product safety: encompassing compliance, enforcement, and education initiatives focused on consumer products such as sleep aids, toys for children under 3 (including wooden toys such as rattles and teethers), products containing button batteries and toppling furniture. The ACCC will focus on high-risk product safety issues for young children by: taking appropriate regulatory and enforcement action working with suppliers to improve recall effectiveness of young children's products developing communication and education strategies, including increasing consumer awareness about safety risks in this area to support informed buying decisions and take actions that protect young children's interests and safety.
	Infant sleep: implementing strategies to prevent injuries and deaths associated with infant sleep products (including inclined products). The ACCC will focus on: assessing data and intelligence and engaging with other regulators, to inform our knowledge of product safety risks and emerging trends in the infant sleep environment conducting investigations into sleep products of highest concern and taking enforcement action where appropriate and having regard to the young children’s compliance and enforcement priority area engaging with relevant stakeholders to proactively address concerning products, including encouraging industry to conduct due diligence prior to offering products for sale increasing consumer awareness about safety risks in this area to support informed buying decisions continuing the development of a mandatory standard to address infant sleep products and assessing whether further changes are necessary to other relevant existing standards based on emerging trends in infant sleep products.
	Product safety online: strengthening product safety online including through the use of technology by online marketplaces to detect and prevent unsafe product listings online, and best practices to reduce safety risks from second-hand goods sold online. The ACCC will continue to strengthen product safety online through: encouraging the adoption of best practices to prevent and detect the sale of unsafe products online, including through the use and/or expanded application of technological tools to address high risk and persistent product safety issues online monitoring unsafe, non-compliant and banned products online through surveillance and taking enforcement action where appropriate collaborating with domestic and international regulators to support initiatives to address emerging and priority product safety issues locally and globally developing strategies to raise awareness of compliance obligations amongst online sellers, particularly offshore sellers discussions with Product Safety Pledge signatories and complementary strategies for non-signatory online marketplaces.
	Sustainability and maintaining product safety: supporting Australia’s transition to a sustainable economy including through education and awareness raising. The ACCC will focus on: ensuring the ACCC does not perform its product safety functions in a way that creates unnecessary barriers to industry or government pursuing environmental sustainability objectives supporting consumer confidence in the safety of products needed to underpin Australia’s transition to a net zero and circular economy. The ACCC's actions will include: reporting on the ACCC’s scoping study of the potential consumer safety hazards associated with lithium-ion batteries, and proposing risk mitigation strategies if required – these may include potential improvements to the regulatory framework to support households to transition to renewable energy systems and electrical products considering ways to ensure key safety requirements in ACL standards are sufficiently available to successive owners of products updating recall guidelines to cover the circular economy considering the development of best practices to reduce safety risks from reused or second-hand goods sold online.

Product safety priorities

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