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With the rapid rise of environmental consciousness in Australia and abroad, consumer-facing businesses are increasingly making claims about the environmental qualities of their products, services and business operations. While the ACCC has had guidance on the practice of “greenwashing” for some time, policing of environmental and sustainability claims has been a core area of focus for the ACCC in the last 12 months.

Baker McKenzie’s Sanctions Blog published the alert titled  Blog Series: Sanctions Enforcement Around the World – Five Eyes Partners agree to coordinate enforcement on export controls on 11 July 2023. Read the article via the link here. Please also visit our Sanctions Blog for the most recent updates.  

From 9 November 2023, the unfair terms regime will change so that significant penalties may apply for breaches of the UCT regime. As a result, businesses need to look again at their standard terms for unfair terms risks.

Australia’s new Register of Foreign Ownership of Australian Assets will take effect on 1 July 2023. Expanding on the previous registers for water interests and agricultural or residential land, the new Register records foreign interests in a broader range of Australian land, entities, businesses and assets, with significant potential penalties for non-compliance.

In announcing its Strategic Plan for Australia’s Payments System, Treasury has provided the clearest direction to date on how it plans to modernize and revamp the regulatory framework for payments in Australia. It outlines the Australian Government’s key priorities and initiatives for modernizing and regulating payments systems in coming years. This announcement follows a very broad consultation on its strategic plan and a number of reviews undertaken in this space.

Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018 created a regime requiring large companies to report annually on what they have done to assess and address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains. On 25 May 2023, the Federal Government tabled a report on a review of this Act. This review covered the first three years of the Act’s operation. Thirty recommendations have been made.