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 pm Friday 2 December 2005.