| Summary |
This document is a statement of the directions and priorities which the Commission expects will shape its future workload well into 2000. For the most part it is necessarily couched in broad terms due to the breadth of the Commission's role and unpredictable nature of much of its work. Legislative change, global influences and marketplace dynamics continue to change its operating environment. The Commission's establishment was itself a product of this climate of change - in particular the domestic and international pressures for markets generally to be governed by competitive rather than explicit regulation. The volatility of the present market requires flexibility in the determination of priorities. Essentially the Commission is event driven, reacting to the market place yet does develop strategies to pre-empt and hence prevent market failure. The Commission's primary responsibility is for securing compliance with the Trade Practices Act, by means of persuasion, education and litigation. It has a much larger role than was directly inherited from the Trade Practices Commission and Prices Surveillance Authority, because of amendments to the Act and to related legislation since the Commission's formation. The most important of these changes have been: enactment of State/Territory laws effectively extending application of the Act's anti-competitive conduct prohibitions to all Australian businesses, including government enterprises and unincorporated entities; the introduction of Part IIIA, establishing a legislative regime for third party access to facilities of national significance; introduction of Parts XIB and XIC, a telecommunications-specific regime dealing with anti-competitive conduct and access issues in that sector; strengthening of provisions designed to safeguard the bargaining position of small businesses in their dealings with larger businesses; and The New Tax System related price changes.
One important consequence of increased global competitive pressures on Australian businesses is that the Commission focuses on the non-traded sector in its assessment of anti-competitive arrangements, especially in regard to merger and acquisition proposals. In fact in recent years the Commission has opposed no merger proposal in which the merged or enlarged entity would face significant competition from imports. Other competitive pressures on the Australian market are affected by external factors and thus lessen the chance of anti-competitive conduct in some sectors. Another is the impact of new technology, especially communications and information technology (e-commerce). Domestically this has resulted in many new, and sometimes complex, consumer products. These developments have raised new issues in ensuring that consumers are in a position to make informed choices based on accurate information. Technology has also made possible new ways of doing business, both within and across national borders - and new opportunities to mislead or otherwise exploit consumers. New technologies can affect the state of competition in many markets and these effects - generally positive but sometimes negative - must be taken into account by the Commission in its decisions on competition questions. International cooperation between like regulatory agencies, in both the competition and consumer protection fields, has assumed growing importance, as have the inter-relationships between competition policy and trade policy. The Commission is already an active participant in international forums and cooperative exercises designed to help deal with the problems brought by global markets, and will continue to give high priority to such involvements. Technical assistance to regional economies in transition is a growing and vital role, most of it in conjunction with AusAid.ish Australia) an
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