Background
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
(ACCC) chairman Rod Sims has made it clear that
'Pursuing cartel conduct, which is so detrimental to the
competitive process, will always be an enforcement priority for the
ACCC.'1 In recent years, however, there has been
growing public concern that the regulator's purportedly tough
stance on these anti-competitive practices was doing little to
dissuade corporations, particularly multinational corporations,
from undermining the competitive balance of the Australian
market.
On 26 March 2018, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) published its much anticipated
report on Pecuniary Penalties for Competition Law Infringements in
Australia (OECD Report). It found that in
Australia, both the maximum and average penalties imposed by the
Courts for competition law breaches are significantly lower than in
the OECD jurisdictions considered, especially for large firms or
for long-standing
