Hello and welcome to this M-Lax podcast. I'm senior correspondent Laurel Henning coming to you from Sydney

and joining me for today's podcast is Australasian managing editor James Panicki, who's in

Melbourne. Hi, James. Hello, Laurel. James, it's been quite a month for merger law in Australia.

We've seen the country's competition regulator oppose what would have been an historical

15 billion Australian dollar merger between Vodafone Hutchison Australia and homegrown telecom company,

TPG, something our listeners can hear more about in our last podcast from Australia, actually.

And that decision has now landed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in

federal court, with the companies appealing against its decision.

But just days after that decision on Vodafone TPG, the ACC

lost a landmark court case where rail transport company Pacific National won its court battle

against the regulator in a dispute over its acquisition of Acacia Ridge Terminal. It's something

you've been following really closely. So let's throw into the mix as well, ongoing discussions to review M&A laws just for the digital industry. And there's quite a bit going on.

It's not all good news for the ACCC. James, tell us a little bit about Pacific National and why that

was such an important case for the ACC. Well, it's important because the ACC has had a few

worrying defeats in court that go to the regulator's ability to block mergers and acquisitions.

Last month's Pacific National case was just the latest of these defeats.

And, of course, I mean, it's got a long way to go in the sense that we're assuming that the ACC will appeal this decision.

So it could go all the way to the High Court, which is the Supreme Court of Australia. And we should also point out

that the judge ruling on the matter did make comments that would offer some encouragement to the ACC

in its pursuit of this matter. That said, though, I mean, as things stand, the Federal Court of Australia has indeed

overruled the ACC on a key M&A case that the regulator really couldn't afford to lose.

And this is playing out against a backdrop in which, as you just mentioned now,

...