Today marks the first day the long-awaited criminal cartel laws enter force in Australia. The news laws create new civil and criminal offences for engaging in cartel conduct. Cartel participants now risk up to 10 years jail for making or giving effect to cartel provisions, defined (in s 44ZZRD(2)!) to include price-fixing (this replaces s […]
Tag Archives: competition law
The Trade Practices Act (TPA) is too big and too complicated. The Government has introduced phase I of their two-phase plan to implement a new Australian Consumer Law which will bulk up the Act even further (the Bill alone runs to 84 pages). The adds to the additional 90 pages of statutory text generated by the […]
The ARC has accepted the ranking of law journals proposed (reluctantly) by the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) and it’s not good news for competition law academics. Rankings are designed to ensure research is assessed based on ‘quality’ and not merely ‘quantity’, although exactly how this will work in practice remains unclear. Good quality […]
On 6 May the government released a second discussion paper relating to the introduction of creeping acquisition laws in Australia. It is disappointing to say the least. A ‘creeping acquistion’ involves ‘the acquisition of a number of individual assets or businesses over time that may collectively raise competition concerns, but when considered in isolation, are […]