The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued its first report on whether Australia Post is subsidising its competitive activities from its monopoly activities.
"The ACCC has found that Australia Post's 2004–05 regulatory accounts do not provide any evidence of cross-subsidy from its reserved services to its non-reserved services", ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, said.
"The ACCC has not finalised its views on the appropriate level of disclosure in these reports, so this first report does not disclose information that Australia Post considers is confidential. In allowing these exclusions from the report, the ACCC has respected Australia Post's claim of confidentiality. However, it is not necessarily satisfied that all of this information is confidential".
Mr Samuel said the ACCC is now seeking further comments from industry on the appropriate level of disclosure.
The ACCC's preliminary views on the principles for disclosure of information contained in Australia Post's regulatory accounts are contained in a consultation document that has also been released today.
"The ACCC now invites interested parties to submit their views in light of the level of disclosure contained in the first cross-subsidy report.
"If the ACCC determines, after it has finalised its consultations with interested parties, that any of the excluded information should be disclosed, it will re-release the cross-subsidy report and disclose that information", Mr Samuel said.
The 2004–05 cross-subsidy monitoring report and the ACCC's preliminary views on the principles for disclosure will be available from the ACCC's website.
Submissions on the principles for disclosure should reach the ACCC by 5 p.m. 30 September 2006.
In addition to its general responsibilities in enforcing the Trade Practices Act 1974, the ACCC 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, and
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 1989 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.
