Price signalling

On 24 November 2011, the Senate passed the Competition and Consumer Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2011 which introduces new prohibitions against disclosures of pricing and other competitively sensitive information. The new law will take effect six months after the Bill receives Royal Assent (most likely in June 2012).

The new law prohibits two types of price signalling, subject to a number of exceptions:

• private disclosures of pricing information to competitors, irrespective of the purpose of the disclosure or its likely effect on competition; and
• public or private disclosures of information about prices, capacity or strategy for the purpose of substantially lessening competition.

Regulations specifying the particular goods and services to which the new law will apply are still to be released. The Government has stated its intention that the new prohibitions will initially only apply to the banking sector, but has left open the possibility of extending it to other industry sectors in the future.