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.