The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today published a paper outlining the broad approach it intends to take in developing procedural rules for proceedings under the telecommunications access regime.
Under recent changes to the Trade Practices Act 1974, the ACCC was provided with the broad power to make written rules that set out the procedures to apply in connection with matters arising under Part XIC of the Act. These rules can modify or displace some procedures currently set out in the Act.
The legislative amendments require the ACCC to publish a development plan outlining its proposals for making these procedural rules and an indicative time for making them. The ACCC will finalise the development plan in March 2006 after receiving comments from industry on today’s paper.
An ACCC Commissioner, Mr Ed Willett, said the procedural rule-making power is intended to facilitate more timely decision making and therefore provide greater certainty to industry participants.
"By giving the ACCC greater discretion to determine its own procedures, the power to make procedural rules will allow it to remove many of the sources of delay in the process", Mr Willett said.
For example, the ACCC may make procedural rules to:
- allow minor modifications to undertakings or exemption applications currently under consideration by the ACCC without the need to restart full public consultation processes
- allow it to specify the form and content of applications, undertakings, variations and other documents given to the ACCC under Part XIC
- allow it to specify modifications to the current procedures for dealing with confidential information, and
- allow it to specify a time limit by which parties must respond to requests from the ACCC for further information.
Submissions must be received by 22 February 2006. The ACCC will conduct further public consultation when it releases draft procedural rules later in the year.