In this very brief chat I consider the goals of Australian competition law in the context of our previous discussion of the views of Chicago School and Harvard School theorists. I suggest that the essence eof the Hilmer reforms that were largely implemented in the 1995 Competition Policy Reform Act can be summarised as Entity Neutrality, Competitive Neutrality, Contestability (including Access issues) and transparency. I draw particular attention to the summary of the Hilmer Report on pp 119-121 of the Casebook and the chart headed Six Elements of a National Competition Policy on p.122.

The discussion concludes with a discussion of barriers to entry in relation to the launch of a new radio station, Vega, targeted at baby boomers, and the adjustment strategies required to restore equilibrium to the market for fine wool production in Australia.

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This special Fireside Chat has been recorded to accompany the launch on to DSO of the Economics Toolkit. That Toolkit has been prepared by Dr Phil Hellier, a senior lecturer at Deakin in the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance. It consists of some 50 power-point slides, arranged in a Roadmap to enable users to “drill down” to particular points of interest. Guidance in converting the slides to the Roadmap presentation was provided by Dr Rodney Carr, the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Business and Law.

The School of Law is grateful to both these colleagues, and to John Wiley and Sons, the publishers of M.Browning & M. Zupan’s Microeconomics: Theory and Applications, 8th edition, from whose text Phil has adapted, with the publisher’s permission, the slides in the Toolkit. These slides are restricted to students in MLL 409, Competition Law and Policy, so this Fireside Chat may not be suited to external listeners.

This special Fireside Chat highlights some of the slides of particular relevance to our subject, and, in doing so, refers to a number of cases included in the Clarke and Corones Casebook. These cases are:

Tru Tone v Festival Records
TPC v Arnotts
News v ARL (judgement of Burchett J at first instance with reference to market
definition issues-see paras 75-167. This aspect was not challenged on appeal).
TPC v AMH
TPC v Ansett
TPC v Email
TPC v David Jones.

My apologies that the Toolkit is somewhat large to access on DSO and that this chat is some 5 minutes longer than normal. I am investigating solutions to the former problem.

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In this fireside chat I initially discuss the technical aspects about how the key competition provisions of the Trade Practices Act have been enacted as state and territory laws without sacrificing the principle of parliamentary
sovereignty. The result is that there is now a unified, nationally based competition law regime.

The question then becomes what are the goals of this regime? To answer this, and with the particular assistance of the topic cartoon on the CD ROM, we turn to consider the differences in emphasis between Chicago and Harvard school
theorists in the United States and note that the Chicago emphasis on efficiency, first, last and in-between as the goal of competition law is currently in the ascendency.

In the interest of brevity and recognising that this topic is a little dry for some tastes, there is no discussion of current developments on this occasion.

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In this session I discuss the operation of severance in the doctrine of restraint of trade, and , in particular, problems encountered by the use of mechanically generated ladder clauses. The courts have complained this leaves them in the position of being asked to issue advisory opinions and determining what , if anything, the parties have agreed to. This practice arguably reached reached its apogee in Austra Tanks Pty Ltd v Running 1982 NSWLR 840 in which the 80,000 plus permutations before the court were condemned as a “malevolent covenant.” This case was referred to in the 1984 British Columbia Law Reform Commission Report on Covenants in Restraint of Trade. (LRC 74 April 1984)
See http://www.bcli.org/pages/publications/lrcreports/reports(html)/Lrc74text.html

We then turn to an overview of the competition provisions of the TPA. Our discussion here is concerned to explain the pattern of constitutional interpretation that delayed the establishment of effective competition law statutes in Australia, and how changes in constitutional interpretation, combined with a degree of constitutional overkill, have ensured that the TPA has survived.

Finally, we discuss the concerns of civil celebrants that there will be an oversupply in that industry if “character” and territorial considerations are discarded in a foreshadowed de-regulation of requirements to become a celebrant.

Brief comparisons are suggested with the position of newsagents and pharmacists.

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