Assistant Treasurer and Competition Minister Chris Bowen has given a clear indication of the new Government’s approach to competition policy in this interview.

On prison for cartel operators

"The first thing we will do is this. We believe that you need to have
disincentives for cartel operations. Cartel is theft. It’s stealing off
consumers. In several countries around the world if you operate a
cartel you go to prison. Five years, in Canada, Germany, Ireland, the
United Kingdom. Ten years in the United States. So we’ll legislate to
have prison terms for cartel operations. Because the problem we’ve got
is, businesses get together and they think, we could make a lot more
money if we did this and even if we get caught, the fine will be
potentially less than what we make so we cant really lose. But you’ve
got the possibility of five years at Her Majesty’s pleasure, you’ll
think a lot more closely about entering into those side deals."

On predatory pricing

"…the ACCC has to be able to prove that that big business can make the
money back later. That’s a very, very hard thing to prove so we will
legislate to remove that requirement. It’s called the recoupment
requirement. We would legislate to remove that and we’ll really
strengthen the appropriate sections of the Trade Practices Act and make
it easier for the ACCC to bring these cases. We believe in competition,
we believe in fair competition, we don’t believe in big businesses or
any other business being able to reduce their prices so low for a short
period of time to drive everybody else out and then to be able to
charge whatever they want…

The other thing that we will do is – at the moment, if you want to take
a big business on you have to go to the Federal Court. Now, for a small
business that’s very hard. If you believe a big business is
intentionally driving you out of business so that they can then put
their prices up later you’ve got to go to the Federal Court. That’s a
very expensive jurisdiction. So we’ll make that at the Federal
Magistrates Court which is cheaper and easier and generally more user
friendly – available for those sorts of cases…

we’ll put the definition of take advantage in the law so it is very
clear for judges what the Government’s intention is by the term “take
advantage”. That will basically say, if you’ve got market power and you
use that market power to effect another business, to drive them out of
business or to damage them, intentionally then that will a breach of
the act."