We break down the ACCC’s recently announced 2026-27 Product Safety Priorities and take a look at what the ACCC achieved under last year’s priorities.
On 19 June 2026, the ACCC released its 2026–27 Product Safety Priorities, outlining the regulator’s key areas of focus for the coming year. Announced by Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb at the National Consumer Congress, the priorities reflect the ACCC’s concerns about the impact of ongoing financial pressures and rapid technological change on product safety, and commitment to pursuing evidence-based, targeted product safety interventions. We examine what the priorities mean for suppliers, platforms and brands.
A copy of Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb’s speech is accessible here.
The 2026—27 product safety priorities at a glance
For 2026—27, the ACCC has identified four product safety priorities:
- Digital markets: Manipulative and false practices and unsafe consumer goods in digital markets – focusing on the responsibility of online marketplaces for product safety, cross-border sale of unsafe products online and continuing its Product Safety Pledge initiative
- Young children: Consumer product safety issues impacting young children – focusing on systemic non-compliance with button battery standards and promoting compliance with the recent infant sleep and toppling furniture mandatory standards
- (New priority area) e-Micromobility safety: Developing nationally consistent standards to improve the safety of e-bikes and other e-micromobility devices – focusing on speed and power limits, battery safety and consumer information requirements
- Mandatory standards: Updating mandatory standards to help improve safety, broaden choice and lower costs– focusing on keeping the mandatory standards consistent with international best practice
This represents a consolidation of the 2025-26 five priority areas, which also included two further standalone priorities on lithium-ion battery safety and improving product safety data. Those themes have not been consolidated, with lithium-ion battery safety targeted as part of the priorities on young children and e-micromobility safety, while data and intelligence capabilities continue to underpin the ACCC’s broader product safety work.
New product safety priority deep dive: e-micromobility devices
The inclusion of e-micromobility as a new standalone priority follows on from the Australian Government’s commitment in the 2026-27 Federal Budget to provide $6.6 million over three years for the ACCC and Treasury to develop nationally consistent standards for all e-micromobility devices.
It reflects the rapid growth in use of e-bikes and e-scooters, and the corresponding escalation in safety incidents. In particular, the Chair pointed to the following data in her speech:
- In 2025, 14 people lost their lives in e-bike or scooter accidents on Queensland roads alone
- Emergency department presentations involving these devices in Queensland increased by 23% compared to 2024, and 45% compared to the prior year
- At St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, serious injuries involving e-bikes doubled
- Five people in Australia have lost their lives in lithium-ion battery fires linked to e-bikes or scooters in recent years
As recently reported by the ABC, the removal of a requirement for imported e-bikes to meet European safety standards in 2021 by then-assistant transport minister Barnaby Joyce led to an influx of high-powered, unregulated devices into Australia. While the Albanese government reintroduced import standards at the end of 2025, the application process remains voluntary, raising concerns across government that non-compliant products could still enter the market.
Continuing product safety priorities: What did the ACCC achieve in 2025—26?
In her speech, the Chair highlighted the significant volume of product safety enforcement and compliance outcomes delivered over the past year. These actions demonstrate the ACCC’s focus on ensuring its priorities are not merely aspirational and are backed by meaningful enforcement activity.
Digital economy
The ACCC’s 2025–26 priority on enforcing product safety standards online has yielded a number of significant outcomes:
- Magnetic chess take-down requests (June 2026): The ACCC issued take-down requests to Amazon, eBay, Kogan and Fruugo for listings of banned small high-powered magnet toys, including ‘magnetic battle chess’ games. All four marketplaces committed to removing listings, contacting affected customers and offering refunds.
- Ghost stores: The ACCC engaged directly with platforms including Shopify to disrupt “ghost store” conduct. “Ghost stores” refer to fraudulent or deceptive online storefronts that are set up to mislead consumers, typically by mimicking legitimate retailers or brands, advertising products at attractive prices, and then either failing to deliver goods, delivering counterfeit or unsafe products, or harvesting payment and personal information. Since the start of 2025, the ACCC estimates it has received at least 360 reports about 60 online retailers.
- Product Safety Pledge: The ACCC employed non-litigious tools, such as the online Australian Product Safety Pledge which is a voluntary initiative which aims to protect consumers from safety risks when shopping online. Under the Pledge, signatories, such as AliExpress, Amazon Australia and eBay Australia, commit to 12 product safety related actions and to reporting annually on their performance, measured against 3 key performance indicators. The signatories collectively removed over 31,000 unsafe listings from their marketplaces in 2024–25, after consulting product safety information sources including the ACCC’s Product Safety website.
- CHOICE designated complaint (June 2026): Earlier this month, CHOICE made a designated complaint to the ACCC raising concerns about unsafe products sold online. The ACCC has committed to carefully considering the issues raised and providing a public response.
Young children – button batteries, toppling furniture and infant sleep products
Button battery enforcement has been the most visible area of product safety enforcement, with the ACCC obtaining a $15 million penalty in its action against City Beach in December 2025 and more recently commencing Federal Court proceedings against Amazon AU in relation to button batteries in children’s unicorn backpacks. Other key enforcement outcomes in this area include:
- Baby bottle self-feeding ban (26 May 2026): The ACCC has achieved a permanent ban on baby bottle self-feeding devices, which has been in effect from the 26 May 2026. The ban applies to products that position a baby bottle, or bottle teat, so an infant can self-feed without another person holding the bottle or without adult supervision. Key safety risks include injury or death from choking, aspiration or suffocation.
- Infringement notices: Over the past year, the ACCC has issued infringement penalty notices for non-compliance with button-battery requirements to Hungry Jack’s ($150,000), Davie Clothing (t/a Oodie) ($150,000) and Tesla ($155,000).
- Enforceable Undertakings: The Wiggles admitted in November 2025 that the Emma Bow headband likely breached the ACL by failing to include mandatory button battery safety warnings. The Wiggles committed to raising awareness of button battery dangers, including through a podcast episode for parents.
- Voluntary recalls: Since the button battery standards commenced in June 2022, the ACCC reported it has published 172 voluntary recalls for potentially non-compliant products, and investigations have resulted in 7 enforcement outcomes involving 10 traders.
Over the past year, the new mandatory standards for toppling furniture and infant sleep products both came into effect, with the ACCC also working with state and territory regulators to promote compliance and delivering the ‘Sleep Bub Safe’ campaign.
Mandatory standards
The ACCC is still in the process of modernising mandatory standards by implementing the December 2024 framework reforms. Those changes allow mandatory standards to reference overseas or voluntary Australian standards “as they exist from time-to-time”, meaning Australian requirements can now automatically keep pace with international updates without a separate regulatory process each time. This helps achieve one of the ACCC’s key priorities of right-sizing regulation and relieving regulatory burden, which we blogged about in September 2025.
This priority aligns with the Productivity Commission’s recommendation in its December 2025 National Competition Policy final report to harmonise mandatory standards across Australian jurisdictions and internationally. It found that such reform could add an estimated $1.1-3 billion per year to the Australian economy.
Aligning with the ACCC’s overall theme of considering “what it takes to achieve real change”, harmonising Australian requirements with international standards seeks to ensure that compliance for businesses across multiple jurisdictions will be easier and less costly. In turn the ACCC states this will lead to “greater competition, improved efficiency, wider product choice, and ultimate lower prices for consumers”.
The ACCC is currently reviewing five standards relating to pedal bicycles, child restraints, aquatic toys, toys containing lead and baby bath aids. Five more reviews are upcoming, including bunk beds, baby dummies, toys containing magnets, swimming and floatation aids and prams/strollers.
Lithium-ion battery safety
Despite lithium-ion battery safety being a standalone priority in 2025–26, the year passed without the introduction of a mandatory safety standard for lithium-ion batteries in consumer products. The ACCC released its lithium-ion batteries issues paper in December 2022 and published a comprehensive report in 2023 identifying the absence of a nationally consistent regulatory framework. Nearly three years later, the regulatory position remains largely unchanged, with the ACCC continuing to rely on consumer education campaigns, voluntary recalls and the work of state and territory electrical safety regulators. The ACCC has acknowledged that it is not best placed to address what is fundamentally an electrical safety issue and that the absence of nationally consistent specialist regulation leds to a continuing gap in mandatory product safety coverage for a rapidly growing category of products.
Improving product safety data and intelligence
Improving product safety data and intelligence was identified as a standalone 2025–26 priority, the priority has been quietly retired for 2026–27 without any public announcement of what was achieved. The Chair’s speech acknowledged the importance of the ACCC drawing on a wide range of data sources to achieve meaningful actions but gave no indications about whether meaningful progress has been made on the systemic data gaps that motivated the priority in the first place or if the ACCC is continuing to pursue improvements in this area.
Key takeaways
- E-micromobility is now a headline priority. The $6.6 million funding commitment and dedicated workstream signal a sustained regulatory focus on e-bikes and e-scooters over the next three years.
- Online marketplaces face litigation risk. The Chair’s speech and recent ACCC enforcement actions confirm that the ACCC believes online platforms with physical possession or control of products, including through fulfilment arrangements, bear product safety obligations to consumers. Compliance systems must keep pace.
- Button batteries continue to deliver significant enforcement outcomes. With $14 million+ in penalties and the first marketplace proceedings, the ACCC’s zero-tolerance posture on button battery non-compliance is well-established.
- Mandatory standards are modernising. The “from time-to-time” framework reforms will progressively align Australian requirements with international standards, reducing compliance friction but requiring businesses to track updates.
- Enforcement will continue to escalate. The Chair’s speech positioned enforcement as integral to the ACCC’s approach: matching interventions to risk, and using every action from take-down requests to Federal Court proceedings to signal expectations across the broader market.
Image credit: ‘Electric Wheels in Fort Lauderdale, Florida’ by Austin Kirk / Licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Remixed to B&W, cropped and resized.
