Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman – and compulsive David Baldacci thriller reader – Graeme Samuel. Has backed plans to spin off the agency’s telecom regulatory role to a new entity.
At the Charles Todd Oration, Samuel said the ACCC should retain its role enforcing competition laws, but hand off telecoms regulation to an “essential services commission”, bringing all utility regulators into a single agency.
The commission would bring together regulatory functions of the ACCC and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), as well as energy regulators, he said.
“The pricing and access analyses of determinations require a specific regulatory economic expertise and culture,” he said. “That culture is directed to solving market distortions through the complex process of regulation as directed by legislative agreement. It is a culture with secondary focus on competition and its application to market structures and behaviour.”
