Fair trading compliance program
The Office of Fair Trading’s compliance program makes sure businesses, including industries we licence, consistently comply with fair trading laws.
To do this, each year we conduct a coordinated program of:
- educational activities—informing businesses about their responsibilities under the law
- compliance monitoring—making sure the businesses are following the law
- enforcement activities—taking action when businesses don’t follow the law.
In addition to our activities throughout Queensland, we also participate in national compliance and education programs with our regulatory agencies.
Compliance strategy
Our compliance program approach is cyclical. Each compliance operation gives us a chance to better understand trader behaviour, which in turn helps develop strategies to encourage and monitor compliance with the law.
We target our compliance resources based on identified risks and analysis of the marketplace. We focus our efforts on industry sectors, licensees and traders most likely to cause harm, and consumers most at risk.
We recognise the majority of traders in Queensland want to comply with the law. Our regulatory response escalates as a trader’s attitude to compliance deteriorates.
The compliance and enforcement policy detail how the OFT responds to trader non-compliance.
The OFT's compliance checks are conducted:
- across Queensland by our compliance teams based in Brisbane, Cairns, Hervey Bay, Mackay, Maroochydore, Rockhampton, Southport, Toowoomba and Townsville
- by our major investigations team in Brisbane
- by our product safety team.
Scheduled compliance checks
The core of the compliance program consists of scheduled annual operations targeting identified high-risk industries or national issues.
Inspectors schedule operations that adopt a multi-tiered strategy to ensure widespread education, awareness and compliance monitoring. Announced and unannounced visits to traders are also conducted to check they are complying with the law.
Inspectors can also do unscheduled compliance checks in response to:
- a complaint from a consumer or trader
- emerging issues or trends
- localised issues.
Find out more about our fair trading inspectors.
Educational visits
We help licensees in the industries we regulate by hosting educational forums, presenting at industry conferences and meetings and by conducting compliance visits. These visits offer opportunity to discuss a trader's business practices to ensure they do not breach fair trading laws, and to give guidance to encourage compliance with the law.
We conduct additional educational activities based on local area trends and topical issues.
Our outreach program ensures regional and remote Queensland towns receive educational and compliance visits.
National projects
We coordinate education and compliance activities with fair trading agencies across Australia, including the Australian Government, and each of the states and territories, who also operate under the Australian Consumer Law.
Proactive regulation
Based on identified risks and marketplace analysis, we perform industry audits, reviews and educational visits as detailed in the Proactive Regulation of Industry and Marketplace Entities (PRIME) program. The PRIME program sets the strategic approach and principles that guide OFT’s annual priorities and activities.