GRAEME Samuel has returned from an international cartel conference hell bent on securing a long sought-after change to the anti-cartel laws to outlaw so-called facilitated practices.
The amendment to the anti-cartel laws is doing the rounds of Treasury, but the need for any change is hotly disputed by practioners, who fear any change to close an alleged gap in the law will result in overkill.
So far, Samuel is short of the blockbuster cartel case he may want in his last year in office, but he has won a steady string of cartel cases, including last month's $9m penalty against participants in an airconditioning cartel in Western Australia. What Samuel sees as a gaping hole was revealed a couple of years back in two Victorian petrol station cases in which the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged station owners in Ballarat and Geelong had manipulated prices.
The Geelong case was factually more difficult for the ACCC because it was based on a series of phone calls, rather than meetings in smoke-filled rooms, as in the Ballarat case.
In both, however, one or more operators escaped because there was no evidence that they took any notice of calls notifying intended price movements, even though they received them.
The ACCC's favourite silk, Julian Burnside, proposed an amendment to the law, which was howled down by the trade practices mafia, but now Samuel is pushing the government harder for the change.
He is citing successful prosecution by his Israeli comrades last year against five banks for sharing pricing information, and the recent fine handed down against RBS in Britain for advising fee changes to its rival, Barclays.
The debate centres on what Judge Lord Diplock said in the British Slag case in 1962, defining a "meeting of minds". This implies a commitment or an expectation that having told someone of intended price moves, you would expect they would play the game and follow.
Separately, Toll's Paul Little has to get ACCC approval to scratch his head, and so it happens his proposed acquisition of Melbourne trucker Concord Park is before the commission for consideration.
