Public registers

What are the registers? How accessible are they? How do you contact the register officer?

This is a register of decisions under Part IIIA of the Trade Practices Act. They may include decisions of the Minister or ACCC, registered contracts, access undertakings or codes, determinations and declarations.

An authorisation is the granting of immunity from legal action by the ACCC for some mergers and some kinds of anti-competitive conduct that might otherwise breach the Trade Practices Act. Notifications are lodged with the ACCC by companies to give them immunity from the exclusive dealing provisions of the Act. The immunity remains until it is revoked by the ACCC.

Companies may ask for an ACCC-conducted conference after an emergency ban of a product is imposed, or before a compulsory recall order of a product comes into effect. This is a register of such conferences.

This register lists Public Compliance Commitments which are voluntary declarations from companies that they will comply with the price exploitation guidelines and price exploitation provisions of the Trade Practices Act.

This register contains: references given to the Commission by the minister under ss. 10.47(1) and 10.57(1); particulars of decisions made by the Commission to hold investigations under ss. 10.48(2) and 10.58(2); requests to the Commission by the minister under ss. 10.48(3) and 10.58(3); relevant documents given to the Commission; particulars of oral submissions; reports given to the minister by the Commission in relation to such investigations.

Browse the register for mergers and acquisitions currently being considered or browse the previous merger decisions by year.

Under Part VIIA of the Trade Practices Act the ACCC vets price rises for specified organisations, holds inquiries and monitors prices. This register contains locality notices given to the ACCC under section 95Z and includes the ACCC’s deliberations, the outcome and the reasons for the outcome.

In certain circumstances the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission may issue to the public a written notice containing a warning under section 86DA of the Act.

The telecommunications registers include declared services, determinations, competition notices, ministerial pricing determinations, access codes and undertakings.

When the ACCC believes that a breach of the Trade Practices Act has occurred, or may occur, it may decide that the best way to resolve this is by seeking an s. 87B undertaking rather than litigating. The Federal Court has extensive powers to enforce the undertakings and the ACCC keeps a public register of those undertakings.