The ACL has been imposed on Foreign Entities before, if they provide a service or sell to consumers here and they don’t necessarily have to be registered here then the Courts hold that they are responsible to adhere to the ACL (an example is Valve the US Corporation that owns Steam).
From the ACCC response to the Valve Judgement "Justice Edelman also took into account “Valve’s culture of compliance [which] was, and is, very poor”. Valve’s evidence was ‘disturbing’ to the Court because Valve ‘formed a view …that it was not subject to Australian law…and with the view that even if advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with the Australian law the advice might have been ignored”. He also noted that Valve had ‘contested liability on almost every imaginable point’.
“These proceedings, and the significant penalties imposed, should send a strong message to all online traders operating overseas that they must comply with the Australian Consumer Law when they sell to Australian consumers,” ACCC Acting Chair Dr Michael Schaper said.
“Under the Australian Consumer Law, all goods or services supplied to consumers come with automatic consumer guarantees that they are of acceptable quality and fit for the purpose for which they were sold. If they’re not, consumers have a right to a remedy. These consumer rights cannot be excluded, restricted or modified.”"
The trouble is enough complaints have to be made to the ACCC and Fair Trading Authorities to get them to move to action to take the offenders to task. In the Valve case it took over 20,000 complaints for the ACCC to take court action.
