Australian Consumer Law Essay

Words: 1016
Pages: 5

Introduction

There was a major change for Australian Consumer Law. Within this paper, the differences on the old and the new system will be discussed further.
Australian Consumer Law is a single national law, which is, applies in all jurisdictions, to all business and to all industry sectors. The ACL also represents a new approach to considering consumer policy issues, with the Australian Government and the States and Territories working closely together to consider develop and implement changes.
This essay will explain about the differentiation between the old system and the new system. There are several benefits for the consumer such as, this ACL will replace 20 existing state with one law, this new law is also easier to understand

There are strong reasons to have a national approach to consumer protection in Australia. The obvious reason is to ensure a consistent approach for both suppliers and consumers.
Many organisations that supply consumer products and services, supply to consumers nationally and this is an increasing trend. It can become a logistical nightmare to manage different regimes in different states.
In addition, there is no rational explanation for why consumers are offered different levels of protection just because they live in a certain state or territory.
For some organisations, however, introducing a national approach with new consumer laws will mean change and substantial review of existing processes - this of course, means time and money.
For example, a national approach to unfair contract terms will mean that organisations supplying to consumers will need to ensure that their agreements do not contain "unfair contract terms".
According to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), unfair contract terms are those, which cause significant imbalance in parties' rights and obligations arising under a contract and are not reasonably necessary to protect the legitimate business interests of