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Expensive to get wrongAustralia

“Made in Australia” is a test about change, not cost

Under the Australian Consumer Law a “made in” representation is protected only if the goods were last substantially transformed in that country, and goods are substantially transformed where processes undertaken there leave them fundamentally different in identity, nature or essential character from the imported ingredients or components.

A brand that blends, fills and labels imported bulk in Melbourne is betting its front-of-pack line on whether a regulator thinks the bottle is a fundamentally different thing from the drum it came out of, and no amount of Australian spend settles that question.

Exceptions and limits

  • Threshold“Grown in” and “Product of” are the harder claims

    A representation that goods were grown in, or are the produce of, a particular country requires that each significant ingredient or component came from there and that all, or virtually all, processes involved in production or manufacture happened there, which is a stricter test than the transformation rule that governs “made in”.

    The claim above holds only on one side of this boundary. Confidence 92 of 100.

    Wrong if Items 1 and 2 of the table in section 255(1) are amended to drop either the significant-ingredient requirement or the all-or-virtually-all processes requirement.

    1 A representation that goods were grown in a particular country (a) each significant ingredient or significant component of the goods was grown in that country; and (b) all, or virtually all, processes involved in the production or manufacture of the goods happened in that country.

    Cite as omr:au:made-in-australia-is-a-transformation-test#grown-in-and-product-of-are-the-harder-claims

94

94 of a possible 97Tier A, primary document or measured outcome. Nothing at this tier is allowed past 97, however good it looks.

Verified August 6, 2026Rechecked every 365 days, next by August 6, 2027.

Constraint

Held since January 1, 2011A rule, law or policy that limits what you may do or say. The earliest date we are willing to say this held. It may well have been true before that; we do not backdate a record past the evidence we have read. Supported, version 1.

This entry is wrong if

Section 255 of the Australian Consumer Law is amended so that a made-in representation turns on a proportion of production cost or on a percentage of local content, or the substantial transformation test in subsection 255(2) is repealed.

Written before the record was published, not after. If you can show this, send it to hello@tryorbt.com and the correction goes on the record with the entry.

Evidence

  1. Tier Aregulation

    Office of Parliamentary Counsel (Federal Register of Legislation): Competition and Consumer Act 2010, Schedule 2 — the Australian Consumer Law (C2004A00109, compilation 165)

    3 A representation that goods were made or manufactured in, or otherwise originate in, a particular country (a) the goods were last substantially transformed in that country; and (b) the representation is not a representation to which item 1 or 2 of this table applies.

    Item 3 of the table in section 255(1). Items 1 and 2 cover “grown in” and “produce of”, which take priority, so the transformation test is the residual one that most manufactured goods fall into.

    Read 2026-08-06 · Open government · page hash 4bb6c2116d45

  2. Tier Aregulation

    Office of Parliamentary Counsel (Federal Register of Legislation): Competition and Consumer Act 2010, Schedule 2 — the Australian Consumer Law (C2004A00109, compilation 165)

    Goods were substantially transformed in a country if: (a) the goods met, in relation to that country, the requirements of item 1 or 2 in the second column of the table in subsection (1); or (b) as a result of one or more processes undertaken in that country, the goods are fundamentally different in identity, nature or essential character from all of their ingredients or components that were imported into that country

    Read 2026-08-06 · Open government · page hash 4bb6c2116d45

History

  1. v1created

    Initial entry from primary legislation, read 2026-08-06. Titles resolved through the Federal Register of Legislation's catalogue API, which reports in-force status; the text comes from the Register's unpacked EPUB at the dated version path, because the document pages are a JavaScript shell and the `/latest/` alias silently serves part one of any multi-part Act.

  2. v1createdon a caveat

    Initial entry from primary legislation, read 2026-08-06. Titles resolved through the Federal Register of Legislation's catalogue API, which reports in-force status; the text comes from the Register's unpacked EPUB at the dated version path, because the document pages are a JavaScript shell and the `/latest/` alias silently serves part one of any multi-part Act.

Append-only. Nothing in this list is edited or removed once written, including the entries that record our own mistakes. Every change to every record is on the corrections page, and the same log is in entries.json under revisions.

  • au
  • country-of-origin
  • labelling
  • claims
  • manufacturing
  • compliance
  • market-entry

Cite this entry

““Made in Australia” is a test about change, not cost”, The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, entry omr:au:made-in-australia-is-a-transformation-test, retrieved September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/au--made-in-australia-is-a-transformation-test. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129

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Free to quote, cite and act on. Not to resell or redistribute — the sources ask that of us, and each one’s terms are named. Machine-readable: entries.json carries this record under the id omr:au:made-in-australia-is-a-transformation-test, with the same evidence and falsifier.

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