Unfair contract terms and small business contracts: Insights from Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v JJ Richards & Sons Pty Ltd and the case for small business protection.

Part 2-3 of the Australian Consumer Law contains a set of provisions specifically regulating unfair contract terms in standard form contracts. The provisions, as originally enacted on 1 January 2011, applied only to consumer contracts but were legislatively amended to apply to small business contracts as of 12 November 2016. This extension was said to account for the comparable vulnerability of small businesses to unfair terms in standard form contracts, and to encourage small businesses to confidently agree to standard form contracts which more efficiently allocate risk. This article examines the first case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission under the new unfair contract terms small business contract provisions. It explores the Federal Court of Australia's approach to construing and applying the new provisions to the small business context and uses the case as a backdrop against which to revisit the notion that small businesses are as vulnerable as consumers to unfair terms in standard form contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]