The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today re-issued its first report on whether Australia Post is subsidising its competitive activities from its monopoly activities.
"The report now contains information that had previously been removed because Australia Post claimed it was confidential", ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, said today. "This follows consultation with Australia Post and other interested parties about the level of disclosure of information received from Australia Post under the record keeping rules.
"Australia Post has now accepted that its initial position on disclosure was unduly restrictive and that the information disclosed in the original cross-subsidy report was insufficient for the report's purpose.
"The findings of the original report—that there is no cross-subsidy from the reserved services to the non-reserved services—remain unchanged. The re-issued report simply contains more information than was previously issued.
"One non-reserved service (logistics) received a subsidy in 2004-05, but the source of the subsidy appears to be the other non-reserved services and this appears to be due to logistics infrastructure being under-used".
The ACCC has also finalised its views on the principles of disclosure in these cross-subsidy reports, and is releasing this paper at the same time.
The re-issued 2004–05 cross subsidy monitoring report and the ACCC's final views on the principles for disclosure will be available from the ACCC's website.
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
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.
