The removal of restrictions on retail trading hours, pharmacies and parallel imports, and a controversial “effects test” on existing misuse of market power rules are among the many recommendations contained…
A key component of the Financial System Inquiry handed to Treasurer Joe Hockey this week was that “the financial system should be subject and responsive to market forces, including competition”. But on…
“Men make history,” Karl Marx wrote in 1859 in his Critique of Political Economy, “but not always in circumstances of their own choosing”. Whitlam himself would have chosen a different year to be his time…
Are we consumers or are we citizens? Clearly most of us are both. In a capitalist economy people get much of what they need through competitive markets. Yet we also live within a society and have reasonable…
Both the Harper competition policy review, and the more recent Vertigan NBN market and regulatory review have widespread implications for economic regulation. The reports are different in scope and their…
Higher education has barely been touched so far by national competition policy. It was almost invisible in the original Hilmer Report of the mid-1990s, but features in the draft Competition Policy Review…
At last, the government’s Competition Policy Review’s terms of reference have been released, and the panel, with Ian Harper as chair, announced. The minister for small business, Bruce Billson – charged…
The Government’s push to reform competition laws will continue next year with a review focusing on the key groceries, utilities and automotive fuel sectors. These are the sectors that most regularly affect…
The sight of Victorian fruit farmers bulldozing surplus trees due to the loss of supply contracts is a dramatic way to illustrate the quandary facing both Australian industry and growers. In April Victorian…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne