The Fair Trading Act (WA)

Contributed by Ian Macdonald and Su Mahalingham and current to 1 September 2005

Because of the Constitutional limitations of the TPA referred to above, and because the TPA does not apply to non-incorporated businesses, the States found it necessary to introduce legislation along the same lines as the TPA to cover non -incorporated businesses. It did this by, in effect, copying the provisions of the TPA in so far as they relate to consumers and rewriting them into the Fair Trading Act. Hence, all businesses (corporate and non corporate) became subject to almost identical consumer protection laws.

The Fair Trading Act has the same definition for consumer as the TPA, and covers the same sorts of transactions in so far as it deals with supplies of goods and/or services and the price limitations for consumers. Similarly it does not extend to sales by auction, or private sales.