The Trade Practices Amendment (Australian Consumer Law) Act (No. 2) 2010 enhanced the enforcement mechanisms available for breaches of industry codes. These measures commence on 1 January 2011.
These measures include allowing the ACCC to issue public warning notices in relation to suspected breaches and to seek redress for affected parties without having to join them as a party to court action.
The ACCC has a new random audit power for inspecting documents or other information required to be held pursuant to an industry code. The random audit power is framed without a threshold requiring belief that a breach might have occurred. This will assist the ACCC in situations where significant imbalances in bargaining power between industry participants makes less powerful participants hesitant to report instances of contraventions of industry codes by more powerful industry participants to the ACCC, for fear of retaliatory action.