Comment sought on public disclosure of information provided by Australia Post
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued a discussion paper on the public disclosure of information collected under record keeping rules issued to Australia Post. It is seeking comments from Australia Post and other interested parties.
The record keeping rule provisions were introduced to the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989 to enable the ACCC to obtain relevant information necessary for its functions of determining whether Australia Post is cross-subsidising its non-reserved services with revenue from its reserved services, assessing proposed price increases for Australia Post's reserved services and inquiring into disputes about the terms and conditions of bulk mail services.
A record keeping rule requiring Australia Post to provide annual financial reports to the ACCC for 16 defined service groups was issued in March 2005.
"The ACCC considers that disclosure of the information received in these reports will have benefits for all three of its functions, but that these benefits must be weighed against possible detriment to Australia Post", ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, said today.
"The discussion paper indicates the ACCC's preliminary view that it should issue regular reports analysing the information received. The level of detail and the types of data that these reports should disclose will be determined after the ACCC has considered the views of all interested parties".
The discussion paper is available from the ACCC's website.
Submissions should reach the ACCC by 5.00pm Friday 2 December 2005.
In addition to its general responsibilities in enforcing the Trade Practices Act 1974, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has three specific responsibilities in the regulation of postal services:
monitoring for the presence of cross-subsidies between Australia Post's reserved and non-reserved services
assessing proposed price increases of Australia Post's reserved services
inquiring into certain disputes regarding the terms and conditions on which Australia Post supplies its bulk mail services. To assist it in undertaking these roles, the ACCC can issue 'record keeping rules' to Australia Post, thereby requiring Australia Post to keep the records specified and provide them to the ACCC.
The record keeping rule provisions were introduced to the Australian Postal Corporation Act by the Postal Services Legislation Amendment Act 2004, and while one of the primary intentions of introducing these powers was to address concerns about cross-subsidisation, the ACCC may require Australia Post to keep records that relate to any of its regulatory roles.
The ACCC may prepare and publish reports analysing the information provided to it under the record keeping rules and the Minister may direct the ACCC to prepare and publish reports analysing the information provided to it under the record keeping rules.
Such reports may include information that Australia Post claims is commercial-in-confidence if:
the ACCC is not satisfied that the claim is justified, or
the ACCC considers it in the public interest to publish the information.
To date, one record keeping rule has been issued to Australia Post—in March 2005. It remains open to the ACCC to issue further record keeping rules.
