Significant challenges facing competition law and policy need to be confronted if the country’s market economy is to work for all Australians, according to the Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Rod Sims.
In a speech to the Competition Law and Economics Workshop, Mr Sims (pictured) called for three main competition issues to be addressed to protect the health of the economy, including merger law reform, the need to prove the future in competition cases and the role of new regulation for digital platforms.
“Merger control is critical to protecting and promoting competition,” Mr Sims said.
“It is the gatekeeper, protecting us from the negative effects of increases in concentration,” he said.
“If we are serious about protecting competition in this country, we must ensure our merger control regime works as effectively as possible, and that it is consistent with international best practice.”
Mr Sims said the fundamental issue was that when applying the ACCC’s ‘substantial lessening of competition’ test in merger and other competition cases, the approach taken by the courts required the Commission to prove what was likely to happen in the future.
“Rather than considering the overall interference to the competitive process which will be caused by the acquisition of a key player by its closest competitor or by other anti-competitive behaviour,” he said.
“The problem with the existing legal test is that it is being confined to what is currently known and provable about future developments.”
The ACCC Chair said that around the world there was growing recognition among relevant authorities that existing anti-trust laws have not held up well to the challenges posed by digital markets.
Mr Sims said the ACCC planned to consider the need for sector-specific regulation to address the competition and consumer concerns in digital platform markets as part of its five-year digital platform services inquiry, due for release in September next year.
