Search

Court hands down first fines for breach­es of sin­gle pric­ing law

On 4 Novem­ber 2010, the Fed­er­al Court ordered two restau­rants to pay penal­ties of $13,200 each for breach­ing the law requir­ing a sin­gle, all-inclu­sive price to be clear­ly stat­ed to con­sumers. This fol­lows the intro­duc­tion ear­li­er this year of new laws under the Trade Prac­tices Act (which from next year will be…

Ben­e­fits and pit­falls of social media for your busi­ness — do you have the right poli­cies in place?

In brief — Increas­ing use of social media Social media is being used increas­ing­ly, not only by indi­vid­u­als per­son­al­ly, but also by peo­ple who wish to pro­mote their busi­ness­es and them­selves in a pro­fes­sion­al or busi­ness capac­i­ty. Social media can be a pow­er­ful tool for achiev­ing these ends. Dif­fi­cul­ty of cor­po­rate con­trol over social media…

Do you pro­vide cred­it in your busi­ness? Under the new rules you may need a Cred­it Licence

In brief — New cred­it licens­ing régime in Australia If you engage in cred­it activ­i­ties for the first time from 1 July 2010, you will gen­er­al­ly need an Aus­tralian Cred­it Licence or an autho­ri­sa­tion from a licensee before com­menc­ing busi­ness. Busi­ness­es involved in cred­it relat­ed activ­i­ties for per­son­al, house­hold or domes­tic pur­pos­es should…

Equal oppor­tu­ni­ty for women in the work­place — report­ing oblig­a­tions of employers

In brief — Impor­tance of com­pli­ance with EOWA Act The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is seri­ous about pro­mot­ing equal oppor­tu­ni­ty for women in the work­place. Employ­ers need to com­ply with the Equal Oppor­tu­ni­ty for Women in the Work­place Act 1999 (EOWA Act). Renewed focus on equal opportunity The high­ly pub­li­cised sex­u­al harass­ment dis­pute involv­ing…

Will your busi­ness be affect­ed by the PPSA?

In Brief The Per­son­al Prop­er­ty Secu­ri­ties Act 2009 (Cth) (PPSA) estab­lish­es a new, nation­wide régime reg­u­lat­ing inter­ests in per­son­al prop­er­ty. The PPSA is sched­uled to com­mence on 30 Jan­u­ary 2012. HOW DOES THE PPSA CHANGE THE LAW? The PPSA changes the order of pri­or­i­ty of some secu­ri­ty inter­ests, changes the way in which those…

Reten­tion of Title under the PPSA

The com­mence­ment of the Per­son­al Prop­er­ty Secu­ri­ty Act 2009 (PPSA) on 30 Jan­u­ary 2012 has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions on the busi­ness under­tak­ings of many Aus­tralian indus­tries, espe­cial­ly those who reg­u­lar­ly sup­ply goods on reten­tion of title (ROT) terms. An ROT clause, also referred to as a ​‘Roma­l­pa’ clause, is often used…

ACCC cracks down on free range claims

Declar­ing a crack­down on claims by poul­try pro­duc­ers of ​“free range” eggs or birds (or sim­i­lar expres­sions), the Aus­tralian Com­pe­ti­tion and Con­sumer Com­mis­sion (ACCC) has accused a num­ber of Aus­trali­a’s main chick­en sup­pli­ers of engag­ing in mis­lead­ing and decep­tive con­duct regard­ing the pro­mo­tion and sup­ply of their prod­ucts. The ACCC has indi­cat­ed…

Optus wins most recent footy wars

AFL, NRL and Tel­stra unable to stop unli­censed ​“near-live” view­ing of matches On 1 Feb­ru­ary 2012, the Fed­er­al Court of Aus­tralia con­firmed that Optus is able to offer to users ​“near-live” broad­casts of sport­ing events, with­out hav­ing to pay licence fees to the rights hold­ers, rely­ing on the ​“time-shift­ing” excep­tion in the…

Ter­mi­nat­ing employ­ees on sick leave can be a recipe for disaster.

One of the biggest issues for an employ­er is deal­ing with under­per­form­ing staff mem­bers who abuse their sick leave enti­tle­ments or access their sick leave for a stress claim imme­di­ate­ly ensu­ing dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ly meeting. Whilst an employ­er is not to be pre­vent­ed from ter­mi­nat­ing an employ­ee whilst on sick leave if the ter­mi­na­tion…

Why do I need a Will with Tes­ta­men­tary Trusts?

Advan­tages in nut shell Hav­ing a tes­ta­men­tary trust in your will: Can have asset pro­tec­tion ben­e­fits for your ben­e­fi­cia­ries, for instance, by pro­tect­ing from loss caused by bank­rupt­cy and in some cas­es, divorce. Pro­vides cap­i­tal gains and income tax efficiencies. Is pru­dent where a ben­e­fi­cia­ry to your will is either inca­pable of man­ag­ing their own…

Aus­tralian trade mark deci­sion nuckin futs?

An Aus­tralian snack food com­pa­ny has been giv­en the go ahead to sell their pre­pared nuts prod­uct under its uncon­ven­tion­al brand name ​“Nuckin Futs”, fol­low­ing a legal trade mark bat­tle span­ning 12 months. The ini­tial trade mark appli­ca­tion for ​“Nuckin Futs” was first reject­ed by the Trade Mark Office under the Trade…

Real­ly unlucky in love — dat­ing web­site scams

New ACCC guide­lines to pro­tect con­sumers of online dat­ing sites from scammers. If you think that the only peo­ple vul­ner­a­ble to online scams are retirees lack­ing a cer­tain inter­net savvi­ness or gullible folk will­ing­ly to part with sen­si­tive finan­cial infor­ma­tion to the Niger­ian Cen­tral Bank, think again. In response to a sig­nif­i­cant increase in…

Cash-flow prob­lems no excuse for under­pay­ment of work­ers, mag­is­trate rules

In these dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times it is com­mon for small busi­ness­es to expe­ri­ence liq­uid­i­ty and cash-flow prob­lems. Under these sit­u­a­tions it is nat­ur­al for a small busi­ness to con­cen­trate on pay­ing those peo­ple that keep the busi­ness afloat. How­ev­er, it is impor­tant that a busi­ness does not dis­re­gard its oblig­a­tions as an employer…

Insol­vent trad­ing…? Don’t go there.

Direc­tor’s duty to avoid insol­vent trading Sec­tion 588G of the Cor­po­ra­tions Act 2001 impos­es lia­bil­i­ty on a com­pa­ny director: (a) who allows a com­pa­ny to incur a debt when the com­pa­ny is insol­vent, or becomes insol­vent by incur­ring the debt; and (b) who sus­pect­ed at the time when the com­pa­ny incurred the debt that the com­pa­ny…

Reform of Aus­tralian Con­tract Law

On 22 March 2012 the Com­mon­wealth Attor­ney-Gen­er­al, Nico­la Rox­on, released a dis­cus­sion paper which could lead to wide-rang­ing review and reform of con­tract law in Australia. The dis­cus­sion paper was pre­pared by the Com­mon­wealth Attor­ney-Gen­er­al’s Depart­ment. In its sum­ma­ry of the paper, the Depart­ment refers to sev­er­al objec­tives it says may be…