Lead gen amendment shot down in Senate

According to Senator Nick McKim, there’s an elephant in the room – a “giant” one, too. 

Speaking in the Senate yesterday, the Greens Whip said the elephant took the form of Australian financial services and its exclusion from the government’s Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026. The bill, introduced to parliament back in April, introduces a general prohibition on trading practices that would unreasonably manipulate consumers and/or “distort the environment” in which a consumer makes a decision.  

Further, the bill introduces guardrails around subscription services; any person offering subscriptions will be required to disclose key information about the contract up front, notify subscribers about this information at regular intervals and provide an accessible means of ending a contract at all times. So-called “drip pricing” is also targeted by the legislation, requiring goods and services to disclose a base price along with any applicable transaction-based charges.   

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The new rules will commence on 1 July 2027. Most Australian businesses will be covered – except, of course, those in the financial services sector. 

And that’s because today, the Senate voted down the Greens’ amendment to extend the legislation to lead generation and financial services.   

These amendments, had they been included, would have:

• Inserted a definition of lead generation into the legislation that refers to:
  • Collecting the consumer’s personal information for a sales purpose in an obscure,
    complex or misleading way
  • Failing to clearly disclose to the consumer the primary purpose for collecting, using
    or sharing the consumer’s personal information
• Incorporated the unfair trading ban into the ASIC Act

“While the Greens welcome this reform … we’re very disappointed that it stops short of applying the new provisions to the financial services sector, and therefore covering the entirety of the Australian economy,” McKim said.  

McKim noted that both ASIC and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission have consistently advocated for banning unfair trading practices in financial services, pointing to a 2024 speech from ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland where he suggested something very similar to the Greens’ proposal. 

At the time, Kirkland said that the “unconscionable conduct” prohibition in the ASIC Act was an “unreliable tool” for policing unfair trading practices, adding: “While all unconscionable conduct is likely to be unfair, not all unfair conduct will be unconscionable.”

“In the absence of an unfair trading practices prohibition, ASIC must fall back on a complex range of provisions to address conduct that is manifestly unfair to consumers,” Kirkland said.

Since then, McKim said, the government has only indicated it will “consider” Kirkland’s argument.  

“So, the government is thinking about it. Not good enough. [There’s] no commitment to do it and no timeframe,” McKim said. 

He continued: “Entirely predictably, Labor is caving to its big corporate donors. Labor is caving to its corporate masters in the financial services sector, including the giant banking corporations who run so much of Labor’s policy. Labor is leaving a gaping hole in these regulations that the big banks are going to be able to drive a truck through.”  

McKim said banning lead generation under the proposed legislation was particularly important in light of the collapse of Shield and First Guardian, which “cost around 12,000 Australians over $1 billion.”  

“At Senate estimates in October last year, [ASIC chair Sarah Court] indicated that a ban on unfair trading practices in the financial services sector may have assisted ASIC in its investigation and prosecution of the complex web of actors involved in the collapse of First Guardian and Shield,” McKim continued.  

“Wouldn’t you think the government would want to be doing everything it could to give our regulators the tools they need to either prevent things like First Guardian and Shield happening again or to properly be able to investigate them if, heaven forbid, they do happen again?” 

Ultimately, McKim said Labor refusing to incorporate the Greens’ proposed amendments “will be living, breathing proof that the Labor Party has been captured by corporate Australia.” 

He added: “[It’s proof] that the Labor Party is in thrall to the big banking corporations; that the Labor Party are puppets to the Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Westpac [and] ANZ, and the other massive corporate giants that operate in the financial services sector in Australia.”