On 4 May 2025, new mandatory standards regulating freestanding household furniture will come into effect in Australia. This means that in less than a year's time, significant regulatory exposure will arise for non-compliance, and active enforcement is expected from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The ACCC sought feedback about ways to reduce the dangers posed by toppling furniture which has killed at least 28 people in Australia since 2000 and causes an estimated 20 injuries every week. Following that feedback, an Information Standard has been introduced.
The Information Standard
The Consumer Goods (Toppling Furniture) Information Standard 2024 will require the following three categories of consumer goods to comply with new warning and safety information labelling requirements:
- category 1: clothing storage unit (containing drawers) or bookcase with a height of 686 mm or more;
- category 2: entertainment units of any height typically used for housing televisions, home theatre systems or gaming consoles;
- category 3: hall tables, display cabinets, buffets, and sideboards with a height 686 mm or greater.
The Standard does not apply to:
- any item purchased by a consumer being resold or subsequently offered for supply; or
- second‑hand items; and
- furniture designed to be fastened to a wall or other structure and that cannot be used unless it's affixed.
Compliance requirements
The Standard requires all suppliers of toppling furniture as a consumer good to warn consumers about the risk of injury in specified ways relating to affixing warnings to toppling furniture, displaying warnings at point of sale, and providing warnings in instruction manuals. In practice this creates substantial compliance obligations on manufacturers and importers.
The Explanatory Statement provides examples of swing tags and stickers which would satisfy the various requirements set out below.
The ACCC has published guidance on the Product Safety Australia website. The Information Standard includes various requirements for online and physical point-of-sale labelling such as high-impact warnings, pictograms and symbols about the risk of toppling and the importance of being able to physically anchor the furniture. There are also requirements relating to permanent and durable warning labels that need to be affixed for the lifetime of the product, as well as warnings for the instructions for the product.
Penalties for non-compliance
The requirements in the Standards are a pre-requisite to the legal supply of toppling furniture. Under the Australian Consumer Laws, supplying goods which do not comply with mandatory safety or information standards is an offence. For a corporation, the maximum penalty is the larger of
- $50 000 000;
- three times the value of the benefit gained by the contravening conduct; or
- 30% of the corporation's turnover in the year preceding the offence.
Other consequences can include enforceable undertakings with the ACCC, infringement notices or orders disqualifying individuals from managing corporations.
Key takeaways
All suppliers and manufacturers of furniture regulated by the new standards need to be aware that while complying with the new standards may involve additional manufacturing or process steps, the potential consequences of failing to do so can be very significant.
In addition, separate from the regulatory hurdles, suppliers of toppling furniture ought to be apprised of the residual product liability risks associated with their products because compliance with the standards will not necessarily be a defence to claims from consumers that an item was unsafe.