The Competition and Consumer Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2011 and the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 have been passed by Parliament and both Bills are awaiting Royal Assent.

Price signalling

The Competition and Consumer Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2011 prohibits both the private disclosure of pricing information between competitors and disclosures which take place in the public domain and/or are related to information other than pricing information if they were made with the purpose of substantially lessening competition.

The regulations will prescribe goods and services the Act applies to. It will apply initially only to the banking sector, but the Government has indicated it may apply it to other sectors in the future.

Exemptions include:

• Disclosures in the ordinary course of business
• Discussions between credit providers and credit service providers and for insolvency purposes
• the disclosure of information by a corporation if the disclosure is authorised by or under a law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory and the disclosure occurs before the end of 10 years after the day on which the Competition and Consumer Amendment Act (No. 1) 2011 receives the Royal Assent.
• Disclosure to related bodies corporate
• Disclosure for collective bargaining
• Compliance with continuous disclosure requirements of the Corporations Act 2001
• Disclosure of information to acquirer or supplier of goods or services
• Disclosure to unknown competitor
• Disclosure to participants in joint venture
• Disclosure relating to acquisition of shares or assets

Consequences for breach of the legislation by a corporation would include a fine of up to $10 million.

The legislation will commence six months from the date of Royal Assent.

The banking sector must put procedures in place to comply with the Act.

Creeping acquisitions and unconscionable conduct

The Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 amends section 50 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 which deals with creeping acquisitions.

The Bill also simplifies the unconscionable conduct provisions of the Australian Consumer Law and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 by including a list of interpretative principles and to remove the distinction in the existing provisions between unconscionable conduct those affecting businesses and those affecting consumers.

The acquisitions changes will commence no later than two months after the Bill receives Royal Assent and the changes to the unconscionable conduct provisions will commence on the later of either the day the Bill receives Royal Assent or 1 January 2012.