Australian Business & Compliance Terms

An Australian Business Number, or ABN, is a unique eleven-digit identifier for a business in its dealings with government and other businesses. It is required to register for GST a...

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, is the national regulator for competition and consumer protection. It enforces Australian Consumer Law and the rules ag...

The Australian Communications and Media Authority, or ACMA, is the national regulator for communications and media. For marketers its most important roles are enforcing the Spam Ac...

An Australian Company Number, or ACN, is a unique nine-digit identifier issued to a company when it is registered with the corporate regulator. Only incorporated companies have one...

Ad Standards is Australia's self-regulatory body for advertising content. It applies the AANA Code of Ethics, written by the industry association, covering honesty, decency, discri...

The AFL and NRL seasons are Australia's two dominant football codes, running roughly March to a September or October finals series. They split largely along geography, AFL stronges...

AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, sets advertising rules for registered health practitioners and their businesses, from doctors and dentists to physiothe...

The ABAC Responsible Alcohol Marketing Code is Australia's self-regulatory framework for alcohol advertising. It sets content rules, advertising must not appeal to minors, encourag...

The Australian Consumer Law, often shortened to ACL, is the national set of rules that protect consumers and govern how businesses can market and sell. For marketers the central ru...

The Australian Made logo is the green and gold kangaroo, a certified trademark that signals a product is genuinely made or grown in Australia. It is administered by a not-for-profi...

The Australian Privacy Principles, or APPs, are the set of rules that put the Privacy Act 1988 into practice. They govern how organisations collect, use, store, secure and disclose...

Back to school in Australia is the spending season around the start of the school year in late January and early February, after the long summer holidays. It drives demand for unif...

Bait advertising is promoting a product at a special price when you do not have reasonable stock to meet demand, or never genuinely intended to supply it at that price. In Australi...

A Business Activity Statement, or BAS, is the form Australian businesses use to report and pay tax to the Australian Taxation Office. It covers GST collected and paid, PAYG withhol...

Black Friday, the late-November sales event imported from the United States, has become one of the largest retail moments in Australia, rivalling or overtaking Boxing Day for many...

Buy Now Pay Later, or BNPL, lets a shopper split a purchase into instalments, usually interest-free to them, while the merchant is paid up front minus a fee. Australia led the mode...

Boxing Day sales are the post-Christmas clearance events that begin on 26 December. They are the traditional Australian retail peak, with deep in-store heritage, and they coincide...

Click Frenzy is an Australian online sales event that runs several times a year, concentrating discounts from many retailers into a short, time-limited window. It was an early loca...

Comparative advertising is marketing that names or references a competitor to claim your product is better, cheaper or faster. In Australia it is legal, unlike some markets, provid...

The component pricing rule in Australian Consumer Law says that if you quote part of a price to consumers, you must also show the total price as a single figure, displayed at least...

Consent is the foundation of the Spam Act. To send commercial electronic messages in Australia you need either express consent, where the person actively opted in, or inferred cons...

Country of Origin Labelling is the system requiring most food sold in Australia to show where it was grown, produced or made, often with a bar chart of how much of the content is A...

Cyber Monday is the online sales day on the Monday after Black Friday. In Australia it functions as the closing act of the Black Friday weekend, skewing more heavily online and oft...

The Do Not Call Register is an Australian list of phone numbers whose owners have opted out of unsolicited telemarketing. Businesses that make marketing calls must check their list...

Drip pricing is showing a low headline price and then adding unavoidable fees and charges as the customer moves through the booking or checkout. In Australia it can breach consumer...

EOFY stands for End of Financial Year. The Australian financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June, so EOFY falls on 30 June. It is one of the busiest commercial moments in the calen...

EOFY sales are the clearance and promotional events Australian businesses run into the end of the financial year on 30 June. They serve two buyers at once: consumers chasing discou...

Food and health claims are governed by the Food Standards Code, administered by Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Nutrition content claims like low fat must meet set criteria,...

Gambling advertising in Australia is tightly restricted and the rules keep tightening. They limit when and where betting can be advertised, especially around live sport, ban certai...

GST stands for Goods and Services Tax. It is a flat tax of ten per cent added to most goods and services sold in Australia. Businesses over the registration turnover threshold must...

GST-inclusive pricing shows the total price a buyer pays with the tax already inside it. GST-exclusive pricing shows the price before tax, with GST added later. In Australia, price...

Influencer disclosure rules require that paid or gifted content is clearly identified as advertising. In Australia this is driven by consumer law on misleading conduct and the adve...

The instant asset write-off lets eligible small businesses immediately deduct the full cost of an eligible asset, up to a threshold, in the year they buy and use it, rather than de...

Inverted seasons is the simple but consequential fact that Australia's seasons run opposite to the Northern Hemisphere. Summer is December to February, winter is June to August, an...

The Melbourne Cup, run on the first Tuesday in November, is a horse race that doubles as a national cultural moment, the race that stops a nation. It anchors a week of events, work...

Misleading and deceptive conduct is the central rule of Australian Consumer Law, found in section 18. It bans conduct in trade that is likely to mislead or deceive. For marketing i...

The Notifiable Data Breaches scheme is the part of the Privacy Act that forces organisations to report serious data breaches. If personal information is exposed in a way likely to...

Pay As You Go, or PAYG, is the Australian system for collecting income tax through the year rather than in one lump. It has two parts: PAYG withholding, where you hold back tax fro...

Payroll tax is a state and territory tax on the total wages a business pays once that wage bill crosses a threshold. Each state sets its own threshold and rate. For marketers it is...

The Privacy Act 1988 is the Australian law that governs how organisations collect, use, store and disclose personal information. It is built on the Australian Privacy Principles an...

The Privacy Act is Australia's privacy law and the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is Europe's. Both protect personal information, but they differ in scope, thresholds...

The Spam Act 2003 is the Australian law that governs commercial electronic messages, including email, SMS and instant messaging. It requires three things: consent to send, clear id...

Spam compliance is following the legal rules for sending commercial electronic messages like email and SMS. In Australia those rules come from the Spam Act 2003 and boil down to th...

The Spring Racing Carnival is the weeks-long racing and social season that peaks around the Melbourne Cup in spring. It is bigger than any single race day, anchoring a run of fashi...

Superannuation is Australia's compulsory retirement savings system. Under the Super Guarantee, employers must pay a set percentage of an employee's ordinary earnings into a super f...

The Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code governs how therapeutic goods, medicines, medical devices and many supplements, can be advertised to the public in Australia. It restricts th...

Unconscionable conduct is a separate prohibition in Australian Consumer Law, beyond misleading conduct. It targets business behaviour so harsh or unfair that it goes against good c...

Unit pricing shows the price of a product per standard unit of measure, such as per 100 grams or per litre, alongside the selling price. In Australia it is mandatory for larger gro...

Under the Spam Act, every commercial electronic message you send in Australia must contain a functional, easy unsubscribe, and you must honour opt-out requests promptly. The mechan...