Six Key Recommendations from Australia's Final Digital Platform Services Inquiry Report: What Digital Platform Businesses Need to Know

On 23 June 2025, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (“ACCC”) released its final Digital Platform Services Inquiry Report (the “Report”).

The Report concludes the inquiry called for in February 2020 by the then-treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, and is the culmination of five years of monitoring social networks, online marketplaces, app stores and search engines.   It also follows on from the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry and Digital Advertising Services Inquiry.

The conclusions reached by the ACCC remain consistent with those reached during the course of the Inquiry, namely that without further intervention, digital platforms continue to pose a significant risk of potential consumer and competition harms.  While the Report may be the end of this Inquiry, it likely marks the beginning of a new phase in regulating some of the largest and most ubiquitous global businesses’ operations in Australia.

The Report also appears to recognise that, while Australia was ahead of its time in commencing the Digital Platforms Inquiry in 2017, in the intervening period, other jurisdictions have quickly moved ahead to regulate to address perceived harms.  Most notable these include the Digital Markets Act in the EU and in the UK as well as developments in Japan and some other Asian markets.  The Report acknowledges the need for Australia to keep pace with these developments, but this is now largely in the Government’s hands.

Recommendations

The ACCC makes six recommendations in the Report although the first four featured in earlier reports of the DPSI (and were well received by the Government).  Those recommendations are:

1. Introduce an economy-wide prohibition on unfair trading practices and strengthen unfair contract terms laws to prevent unfair conduct in the digital economy. 
2. Introduce digital platform-specific consumer protections including measures to tackle scam and harmful apps, the introduction of a mandatory internal dispute resolution standards and providing access to an independent external ombudsman scheme.
3. Empower the ACCC to create mandatory, targeted, service-specific codes of conduct for designated digital platforms to address competition concerns.
4. In consultation with the industry, include targeted competition obligations in those codes to address anti-competitive conduct.
5. Enable the ACCC to have an ongoing monitoring function for emerging digital technologies. 
6. Establish and resource the Digital Platform Regulators Forum (DP-REG) as a permanent forum for whole-of-government collaboration and information-sharing on digital platforms. This seems to be based on a similar approach adopted in the U.K.

We consider the ramifications on competition regulation and dispute resolution processes in further detail below.

Digital competition regimes

The Report echoes the conclusions reached by the ACCC in the 5^th DPSI Interim Report, which focussed on competition in digital platform services (and which we have previously commented on).  Despite significant pushback from some quarters, the ACCC remains sceptical about the ability of Australia's existing competition laws to address competition concerns in digital platform markets.  In large part, these concerns (whether correctly or not) remain directed at the enduring market power and perceived “gatekeeper” status of the platforms.

The ACCC continues to recommend and advocate for a new ex ante regulatory framework including specific codes of conduct for individual platforms, similar to regulatory frameworks that have been adopted in the UK, and EU.  The goal of service-specific mandatory codes is to shift the regulatory focus from ex-post enforcement to placing ex ante obligations on large digital platforms to structure their businesses in a way that minimises the risk of anti-competitive conduct occurring in the first place.  The ACCC considers that mandatory codes are required to address competitive harms given digital markets evolve rapidly and the regulatory regime governing those markets must be flexible enough to address the specific concerns that arise from new products entering the market.

As referred to in Recommendation 4 above, the ACCC recommends that sector specific odes should support targeted obligations to address certain types of anti-competitive conduct including self-preferencing, tying, exclusive pre-installation, and impediments to interoperability as well as the establishment of data related barriers to entry.

Following the interim 5^th report, Treasury consulted on a proposed approach to implement the digital competition regime.  That consultation phase closed in February 2025.  With the Labor Government having been recently returned to power, it will be interesting to see if this now moves towards legislation.

The length of this Inquiry and the rapid rate of technological advancement is perhaps best exemplified by the Report’s consideration of issues relating to generative AI, which had barely entered the public consciousness when the Inquiry commenced. Unsurprisingly, the Report finds that use of generative AI is expanding quickly in Australia and identifies potential issues for competition, privacy, and consumer protection.  These concerns are reflected in the ACCC’s recommendation that it continue to have a monitoring function for emerging digital technologies complemented with compulsory information-gathering powers.

A key aspect of the ACCC’s concerns is the extent to which the development of AI and large language models is concentrated among global tech firms.  This has the potential to create high barriers to entry and the risk of further entrenching market power, including in relation to access to data, chips, cloud infrastructure, and talent. The Report refers to risks of anti-competitive conduct such as tying, self-preferencing, and exclusivity arrangements, as well as vertical integration across the “AI stack”. For more information about the intersection between AI and competition law, see here.

Insights

The recent reforms to Australia’s merger laws make it clear that the Government has an appetite for adopting many of the ACCC’s recommendations on competition law reform.  Our expectation is that the Government will likewise look to implement the digital competition regime, particularly given the introduction of similar ex ante regulation in other jurisdictions. It would also be reasonable to expect that the ACCC will expend more capital on monitoring the use of AI systems, particularly in consumer facing businesses – commensurate with the massive investment globally by digital platform and tech businesses in these technologies.  Finally, given the drive to promote DP-REG, we also anticipate that regulators (in particular, the ACCC, the OAIC and the E-safety Commissioner) will work even more closely given AI (and digital platforms more broadly) raise a genuine mix of competition and privacy challenges. 

Privacy Implications

Although the Report focuses primarily on competition and consumer issues, it underscores the critical and unresolved role of privacy in digital platform regulation. The ACCC reiterates its long-standing concerns about how dominant platforms collect, use, and monetise consumer data, concerns that first emerged in its 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry, were reinforced in the Digital Advertising Services Inquiry and that have only intensified with the rapid expansion of generative AI and cloud computing services.

Notably, the ACCC highlights a growing disconnect between consumer expectations and industry practices. According to consumer survey data included in the Report, 83% of Australians believe companies should be required to obtain consent before using personal data to train AI models, indicating overwhelming public support for stronger consent-based privacy protections. This finding is particularly relevant in light of widespread industry practices involving AI training on large user datasets, often without express or informed user consent.

The Report also references ongoing Privacy Act reforms, including partially implemented recommendations from the 2019 Inquiry and the Attorney-General’s Privacy Act Review. The ACCC supports the introduction of a general prohibition on unfair trading practices, noting that practices like manipulative design, undisclosed data uses, and consent traps often involve both competition and privacy harms.

Dispute Resolution

A key theme in the Report is the deficiency of Australia’s dispute resolution processes for disputes between consumers and digital platform businesses.  The imbalance in resources and litigation experience between disputants is often a major obstacle preventing disputes from being resolved quickly and fairly – while also taking into account the interests of both parties.  Reflecting the fact that discontent with dispute resolution processes is relatively widespread in the sector, the Report draws on research showing strong support from consumers and businesses for an independent external dispute resolution body to provide specific dispute resolution functions for the digital platform sector, similar to models already implemented in the EU, UK, and Japan.

At this stage, it is unclear how this proposed new digital platform dispute resolution body would align with other existing dispute resolution mechanisms in different sectors of the economy (including State and Territory consumer tribunals, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, the Small Business Ombudsman and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) and whether “choice of forum” questions will emerge as a factor.  In our view, a move away from digital platform businesses being required to litigate consumer disputes in generalist tribunals would be a positive development for the sector.

Significantly, the ACCC also recommends mandatory internal dispute resolution standards and the establishment of an ombudsman scheme to address power imbalances between platforms and users.  These could well form part of the mandatory code proposal.

In a similar vein, the Scam Prevention Framework Bill was passed earlier this year (in line with Recommendation 2 of the Report).  With digital platforms one of the initial sectors (along with banking and telecommunications) to be subject to regulation aimed at mitigating the digital platforms providers should pay close attention for any consultation regarding sector designation, which will lead to the introduction of internal and external dispute resolution mechanisms.

Insights

For digital platforms, these findings signal a shift toward heightened regulatory scrutiny of their complaint handling mechanisms.  The ACCC appears to be encouraging platforms to invest more in their internal dispute resolution systems to bear more of the burden of resolving consumer disputes.

While digital platform business can expect ACCC to focus more attention on their management of consumer disputes, the proposed reforms appear to be a positive step towards a better dispute resolution regime.  In the short term, businesses should consider how they can bolster internal dispute resolution processes offered to consumers, given the ACCC’s intention for this to become a larger part of the sector.  This may involve revisiting dispute resolution clauses and procedures in terms of use or MSAs.

Over the longer term, businesses should pay attention to any reform proposed to Parliament arising from the Report.  If a new dispute resolution body is introduced, then businesses may need to consider how the specific procedural rules of this new body will affect their pre-existing complaint and dispute handling processes.

As always, the best form of protection against consumer dispute risks is to de-escalate consumer concerns or complaints at the earliest opportunity.  Please reach out to discuss strategies for managing consumer disputes – including pro-active ways to reduce the number of disputes coming through your business.