Mandatory Food and Grocery Code: exposure draft regulations

10 days left to have your say
Date
-
Consultation Type
Exposure Draft Regulations

Key Documents

The Australian Government is seeking stakeholder views on the exposure draft of the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Food and Grocery) Regulations 2024. 

These draft regulations make amendments to the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct to implement the government response to Dr Craig Emerson’s independent review of the code. These amendments include:

  • making the code mandatory
  • strengthening dispute‑resolution arrangements
  • addressing supplier fears of retribution
  • introducing penalties for breaching the code
  • improving outcomes for suppliers of fresh produce.

Amendments have also been made to update and clarify various provisions of the code. Further details on the new regulations are included in the explanatory material.

The government is seeking stakeholder views on whether the amendments, including the details provided in the draft, appropriately give effect to the government response.

The government is consulting separately on exposure draft legislation that includes amendments to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA) to implement the higher penalty amounts agreed by the government in its response to the independent review.

The exposure draft of the regulations contains consequential amendments to increase the amounts of civil penalties in the code, which depend on passage of the proposed CCA amendments.

These amendments are included in Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the exposure draft of the regulations and identify the provisions that will carry the higher penalties upon passage of the proposed CCA amendments.

 

Responding

You can submit responses to this consultation up until 18 October 2024. Interested parties are invited to comment on this consultation.

While submissions may be lodged electronically or by post, electronic lodgement is preferred. For accessibility reasons, please submit responses sent via email in a Word or RTF format. An additional PDF version may also be submitted.

All information (including name and address details) contained in submissions will be made available to the public on the Treasury website unless you indicate that you would like all or part of your submission to remain in confidence. Automatically generated confidentiality statements in emails do not suffice for this purpose. Respondents who would like part of their submission to remain in confidence should provide this information marked as such in a separate attachment.

Legal requirements, such as those imposed by the Freedom of Information Act 1982, may affect the confidentiality of your submission.

View our submission guidelines for further information.

How To Respond

Email

fgc@treasury.gov.au

Post

Address written submissions to:

Competition Policy Unit
Treasury
Langton Cres
Parkes ACT 2600

Enquiries

Email: fgc@treasury.gov.au