Summary

  • Australia’s Act No. 99 received Royal Assent on 26 October; Schedules 2–4 commenced the next day.
  • The law sets different date tests for industry-code conduct and revised penalties, while provider registration waits for a separate start and a six-month application period.

Analysis

The Australian government’s new telecom safeguards law came with more than one start date. Royal Assent was given on 26 October. The next day, Schedules 2–4 began: registered industry codes became mandatory, the civil-penalty formula changed, and the rules for corporate infringement notices were amended. The provider-registration scheme sits in Schedule 1 and follows its own timetable.

That split matters because the law uses different words for conduct on either side of 27 October. New section 121 of the Telecommunications Act requires participants in the relevant industry section to comply with an applicable registered industry code. Its application clause says the section applies to codes registered before, on or after commencement and to conduct engaged in before, on or after commencement. Parliament has therefore put a broad conduct-date rule beside the new mandatory code duty.

The penalty change has a narrower boundary. For specified corporate contraventions, the amended section 570 sets a maximum at the greatest of 30,300 penalty units, three times the reasonably attributable benefit, or 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach-turnover period. Schedule 3 says those amendments apply only when the conduct constituting the contravention occurs wholly on or after its commencement, 27 October. Schedule 4 uses the same wholly-on-or-after test for its revised corporate infringement-notice rules.

The result is a statutory seam. The code provision’s application clause reaches conduct before, on and after its start. The new section 570 formula and the revised infringement-notice rules use a wholly-after threshold. That is a real distinction in the Act’s text, not a theoretical question about what Parliament might do later. ACMA guidance for a continuing contravention whose conduct spans 27 October is the missing fact that would settle how the agency will handle the boundary.

The registration gate has a longer runway. Schedule 1 must start on a date fixed by Proclamation. If it has not started within the 12-month period beginning on Royal Assent, the Act starts it on the day after that period ends. Even then, item 8 gives carriers and carriage service providers a further six months from Schedule 1’s commencement before new Division 3A applies to them.

When that division does apply, it creates a public electronic Carriage Service Provider Register. It also sets the application route, refusal grounds, renewal, revocation, review and customer-transfer duties. The statute’s promise of a public register is specific; its current operating status and first registration date depend on the separate commencement steps.

One safeguard is already written into the code-enforcement provisions. If a registered-code contravention relates directly or indirectly to a matter dealt with by the Australian Privacy Principles or a registered APP code, ACMA must consult the Information Commissioner before taking enforcement action. That consultation rule also applies in relation to contraventions occurring before, on or after commencement.

The Act therefore starts the compliance, penalty and registration tracks at different points. The first one is already dated: 27 October. The provider gate depends on a Proclamation or the statutory backstop, then another six-month period. The law supplies those dates; the first public explanation of a cross-date enforcement case will show whether the transition is legible to the providers expected to comply.

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