Law Council of Australia

Business Law Section

ACCC submission to Treasury consultation—Identifying potential new class exemptions

Submission Date: 18 November 2025

The Competition and Consumer Committee (CC&C) and the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) of the Business Law Section of the Law Council of Australia (Committees), welcome the opportunity to provide comments in relation to the ACCC’s response to Treasury on regulatory reform to improve regulation and reduce the compliance burden on businesses (Consultation).

While Australian competition laws provide an exemption framework that enables commercial conduct that may be anti-competitive but not to the extent it would substantially lessen competition, or has net public benefits, the existing authorisation process is relatively lengthy, and may hinder or delay commercial activity. It can also lead to businesses incurring substantial regulatory costs.

Class exemptions are an efficient mechanism that can reduce regulatory burden and facilitate more efficient commercial decision-making by enabling businesses to proceed with beneficial collaborations without first seeking regulatory approval. This can deliver substantial benefits to businesses by reducing compliance and administrative costs associated with individual notifications and authorisations. The availability of a class exemption for conduct that is unlikely to propose any competition concerns, or meets characteristics of demonstrable net benefit, therefore has the potential to create greater certainty and reduce transaction costs for businesses.

Accordingly, the Committees support the development of additional class exemptions to reduce the regulatory compliance burden and improve economic efficiency. In particular, the Committees strongly support the introduction of class exemptions for intellectual property (IP) agreements (see Intellectual property class exemptions in the submission). The CC&C also considers that, if Part X of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA) were to be repealed, the ACCC should consider a potential class exemption for liner shipping arrangements consistent with the ACCC’s consultation on a potential class exemption for ocean liner shipping (see Shipping class exemption in the submission).

The CC&C also supports further ACCC consultation on a number of other potential class exemption categories, based on the types of conduct that have routinely been authorised by the ACCC, including local council procurement, crisis or contingency coordination, energy transition initiatives, climate and sustainability initiatives, and transport agreements in relation to rail, road and inland waterways. This is explored in more detail in Other potential class exemptions for further consultation in the submission. The C&CC also considers that the ACCC should consider the international experience of class exemptions, which is set out in International experiences with class exemptions in the submission.

The Committees believe that it is important to ensure that the scope or application of the class exemption is capable of being clearly defined or identified by businesses, so that any new class exemption does not compromise competition to the detriment of consumers. Accordingly, the Committees welcome the ACCC’s indication that it will engage in another round of public consultation to seek views on the making of any potential class exemption for any specific class of conduct that is identified through this process. The Committees also support the development of further ACCC guidelines to accompany any new class exemption.

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Last Updated on 20/11/2025

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