Hello and welcome to this M-Lex podcast. I'm Rorall Henning, senior correspondent,

and joining me for today's podcast, dialing in from Melbourne, is Australasian managing editor James Panicki.

Hello, James.

Hello, Laurel.

James, come back in time with me to December 2017.

It's that long ago that the Australian government then led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

called for the country's competition regulator to conduct an inquiry into digital platforms,

with particular reference to Facebook and Google.

Now, here we are, 18 months later and about to see the final report,

which the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is set to hand to government on June 30th.

That final report, the culmination of the widest reaching study of the impact of digital

platforms on Australia's media and advertising industries, will make recommendations to government

that can then be turned into legislation should the government decide to do so. The final say here

is really with the government on what recommendations get drafted into law and how they might look

if that happens.

Now, we don't know what will be in that final report, but we have a pretty good idea based on the interim report, the ACC published in December of last year.

Those preliminary findings included recommendations that looked at competition issues with calls to update merger laws, as well as calls for greater privacy guarantees

and recommendations for the establishment of a digital regulator.

James, to get us started, why don't you walk our listeners through those interim recommendations

just to make it clear what's on the table?

Okay, look, I think the most important takeaway here is that the draft report suggests that

Facebook and Google do have substantial market

...