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Five ways CHOICE made a difference to consumers in 2025
From getting shoddy sunscreens off shelves to forcing big tech to fight scams, it’s been a year of meaningful wins.
Last updated: 10 Dec 2025
Need to know
- CHOICE investigations and advocacy led to changes benefiting consumers in 2025
- Our biggest victories include getting poor-performing and dangerous products pulled off shelves, fairer prices for essential groceries and new requirements for companies to combat scams
- Your support will help us keep making things better for consumers in 2026
This year has been one of the busiest ever for CHOICE. Thanks to your support we’ve secured significant victories for consumers. Here are five of them:
1. Sunscreen scandal exposed
No list of 2025 wins would be complete without mentioning the significant changes brought on by our testing of sunscreen SPF claims in June.
Over 20 products were recalled or paused from sale and the therapeutic goods regulator launched an investigation into the industry after we discovered 16 popular sunscreens weren’t giving the level of protection they claimed to provide.
All the products we tested claimed to come with SPF 50 or 50+ protection, but we found some provided the equivalent of only SPF four.
While one of the brands involved noisily disputed our findings, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which had approved the sunscreens for sale in Australia, launched an investigation.
In the course of its probe, the TGA raised concerns with the base formulation used by one of the sunscreens we’d found to be lacking, advising consumers to stop using 20 other products using this same formula.
Soon, multiple sunscreen brands were pulling their products off shelves, including the company which had initially rejected our results.
As well as helping consumers get the sun protection they need, our investigation resulted in the regulator taking a closer look at the labs sunscreen brands were using to back up their SPF claims.
The TGA has now alerted manufacturers to particular labs it thinks might be unreliable, hopefully ensuring more trustworthy sunscreens on our shelves in the future.
2. Banks, telcos and social media forced to fight scams
From SPFs that don’t deliver, to one that hopefully will.
In coming years, you should be receiving fewer scam texts and seeing fewer dodgy ads on social media, thanks to a new Scams Prevention Framework pushed for by CHOICE.
In February, Federal Parliament passed legislation establishing this framework.
It sets new obligations for banks, telcos and social media platforms to prevent, detect, disrupt and report scams, or risk fines of up to $50 million.
The laws came after CHOICE investigations highlighted scams ads rampant on social media, scammers able to impersonate trusted brands via SMS and the difficulty scam victims face in getting support.
Campaigning by CHOICE and other consumer advocates helped shape the framework, which is designed to shift more of the burden of combating scams from individual consumers to big businesses.
Acknowledging the few avenues available for victims to seek compensation, the framework also establishes an external dispute resolution scheme. This will be designed to compensate Australians who have lost money when a business fails to meet its obligations to stop scammers using its systems.
The federal government is currently consulting stakeholders on the details of the plan.
3. Fairer grocery prices for all
This year also saw the federal government take steps to rein in grocery prices following another series of CHOICE investigations.
In February, the Prime Minister cited our report highlighting the high cost of essentials in remote parts of the country when announcing the government would cap the price of 30 grocery items in certain First Nations communities.
Our investigation four months prior revealed residents of remote parts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory were paying more than double for essential items compared to shoppers in capital cities.
Meanwhile, other changes are set to benefit all grocery shoppers, irrespective of where they live.
In March, the federal government announced it agreed with the 20 changes recommended by the ACCC to make the supermarket sector fairer for shoppers and the businesses supplying goods to retailers.
These include requirements for supermarkets to display clearer pricing information, verifiable discounts and notifications when package sizes change.
Over 30,000 supporters signed our petition backing these changes after we called out the major supermarkets for a range of tactics they were implementing that made it harder for shoppers to get value for money.
These included raising prices when they had promised not to, running confusing ‘specials’ promotions and shrinking the size of some homebrand items while keeping prices the same (something independent food manufacturers are also guilty of).
The federal government recently finished consulting on how it can tweak regulations to implement the changes we and the ACCC are calling for, paving the way for smoother shopping in the future.
4. Fewer confusing energy plans
Last year, CHOICE became one of the first advocates empowered to make designated complaints to the ACCC.
This means we can raise concerns that the regulator must consider and publicly respond to within 90 days, something they’re not usually required to do.
We quickly set about making the most of this new opportunity and in May this year made our first designated complaint, calling out the confusing and potentially misleading information energy retailers were putting on bills.
One particularly egregious practice being adopted by retailers was offering multiple plans with the same name, but different prices. This caused confusion for consumers who received bills which included a section indicating whether or not they could get a better deal by switching to another of their retailer’s plans.
When these better-off messages indicated a plan with the same name as the one the consumer was already on, many customers believed they were already on the best deal.
By not prompting consumers to switch, we estimated this same-name tactic was causing Australians to miss out on savings worth $65 million per year.
Soon afterwards, energy regulators stepped in to force retailers to more clearly distinguish between their different plans.
In several states and territories, retailers now have to alert customers receiving same-name better-off messages that there may in fact be a cheaper version of the plan they’re on that they can switch to.
5. Dangerous products removed from online marketplaces
Recent months have seen some of the world’s biggest online marketplaces pull products from sale following our testing.
In November, we revealed that multiple battery-powered toys and novelty items sold on Shein, AliExpress, Amazon and eBay didn’t comply with Australian safety standards.
These products contained button batteries, whose small size make them easy for children to swallow, which can prove fatal.
In 2020, CHOICE advocacy helped make Australia the first country in the world to require manufacturers to include warnings with these batteries and make it harder for children to remove them from products containing them.
The items bought from Shein, AliExpress, Amazon and eBay weren’t following these rules and were therefore potentially dangerous.
While most of these companies removed the uncompliant items from sale when we shared the results of our tests, AliExpress rejected our findings, so the fight to protect Australians from hazardous products continues.
Fighting for fairness reform and fewer dangerous products in 2026
“These incredible wins wouldn’t be possible without the support of thousands of CHOICE members and supporters,” says our director of campaigns and communications, Andy Kelly.
“Thank you to everyone who took action this year, whether it was signing a petition, sharing dodgy supermarket specials or making a donation to help fund CHOICE’s mission to win fair, safe and just markets for all.”
“In 2026, we’ll continue to work together to win new reforms to ban unfair business practices like subscription traps, and penalise companies that unfairly refuse to give you a refund when you’re entitled to one.”
“We’ll also ramp up our efforts to win stronger product safety laws to finally make it illegal for businesses to sell unsafe products.”
