The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been declared the world’s 2019 Government Agency of the Year at a special awards ceremony in the United States.
Chair of the ACCC, Rod Sims (pictured) said he was honoured that the Agency’s work had been acknowledged on the global stage, in what had been a year of incredibly hard work.
Mr Sims, who was in the US capital to speak at the American Bar Association Spring Conference and to take part in Federal Trade Commission hearings on competition and consumer protection in the 21st century, said he was proud of the teams that worked right across the ACCC.
“They have passion, commitment and innovation that they bring to our work,” Mr Sims said.
“I’m also grateful for the expert and strategic thinking of my fellow commissioners and the robust decision-making processes we have that enable us to take risks and be confident in our decision-making.”
The award, made by the Global Competition Review (GCR), an antitrust and competition law journal, highlighted the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry and the complex Nine-Fairfax merger decision.
In 2018, the ACCC also took its first gun-jumping case against Cryosite, a stem cell storage company, and reached another milestone in its decade-long price-fixing case against airlines with Air New Zealand being the 14 th airline to be fined in those proceedings.
GCR also noted Mr Sims’ reappointment in 2018 for a further three-year term, saying: “He is credited with stewarding the authority’s criminal cartel enforcement work, introduced the year before he started, and the strengthening of Australia’s Abuse of Dominance law.”
