The legacy of regulation and enforcement left by Australia’s bold digital platform investigation

MLex Market Insight

News

4.9 • 9 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Australia’s world-first antitrust review of Facebook and Google’s business models has spawned a new generation of regulation and enforcement, with the country’s competition watchdog using consumer lawsuits, market inquiries and merger reviews to create one of the western world’s most assertive regulatory regimes. But as a recent MLex Special Report argues, there are signs that the legacy of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s 18-month Digital Platforms Inquiry, which wound up in 2019, could yet be tarnished by the reluctance of Australia’s courts to embrace significant parts of the regulator’s agenda.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to this special edition of Emlex's podcast. My name is James Panicki. I'm
0:15.5	Emlex's Asia Pacific Senior Editor. Today we're leaping into your feed midweek to talk about one of our most recent
0:22.9	special reports that covers the extraordinary regulatory developments in Australia. It's called
0:28.9	Pushing Back at Big Tech and it was written by M-X's Sydney-based senior correspondent Laurel Henning
0:34.8	and me. The report is an attempt to summarize and make sense of
0:40.2	Australia's bold experiment with regulation that targets digital platforms, more specifically
0:45.3	Facebook and Google. Of course, Emlex has been covering developments since the Australian
0:51.5	Competition and Consumer Commission launched its 18-month digital platforms inquiry
0:56.7	at the end of 2017. And as the flowchart in the first few pages of the report shows,
1:04.1	that inquiry has spawned its very own family of enforcement initiatives, legislation and probes with an impact also on the review
1:13.2	of mergers and acquisitions. And that's the thrust of what we have written. It's about
1:18.6	understanding the legacy of Australia's digital platforms inquiry and how that probe has placed
1:25.0	Australia at the forefront of a global conversation about big tech
1:29.4	regulation. Now, the big headline-grabbing impact of Australia's digital platforms inquiry has been
1:35.4	the compulsory media code of conduct, which forces platforms to pay media companies for use
1:41.5	of their content. But equally significant has been the inquiry's legacy
1:46.4	on mergers and acquisitions. For example, the ACC has parted company with its European
1:52.2	counterparts by expressing serious concerns about Google's acquisition of SmartWatchmaker Fitbit.
1:59.1	The Australian regulator has expressed similar concerns about the
2:02.4	Facebook GIFI deal. Both of those mergers have now been completed, but the ACC is continuing
2:08.7	its review behind closed doors. There are also significant long-term reports now underway. These are
2:15.5	areas that the ACC felt it hadn't been able to cover
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from MLex Market Insight, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of MLex Market Insight and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.