Australian Competition Tribunal ruling proves ACCC hasn’t a clue about competition laws

The Australian Competition Tribunal’s approval of ANZ’s takeover of Suncorp proves the ACCC hasn’t a clue about the legislation it is charged with enforcing.

ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb. Picture: Aaron Francis / The Australian

So, the Australian Competition Tribunal agrees with me: the ACCC hasn’t a clue about the legislation it is charged with enforcing.

The Tribunal’s overturning of the ACCC’s ban on ANZ buying Suncorp’s banking business is utterly, utterly – and really, quite embarrassingly - damning of the ACCC headed by Gina Cass-Gottlieb.

This is not a case of: well, you win some, you lose some.

As I explained last August, when I wrote that the ANZ had to appeal the ACCC’s utterly ludicrous ban, and, even more, win; the ban was an all-round embarrassingly awful decision, reflecting gross regulatory ineptitude.

I repeat what I wrote then: deputy ACCC chair Mick Keogh, who had carriage of the takeover ban decision – and indeed, proudly owned it - really had to resign, in embarrassment, or be sacked, when, if there was any logic and basic legal competence still around, the ANZ won its appeal.

What say you, Keogh? What say you, Cass-Gottlieb?

The idea that ANZ’s acquisition of Suncorp’s banking business would lead to a “substantial reduction in competition” – the metric for opposing the merger - was always, and immediately, ludicrous.

Indeed, even the ACCC’s special expert called on to assert that the acquisition was seriously anti-competitive, had to grudgingly, if sotto voce, admit that, well, it actually wasn’t.

That then led the regulatory analysis to fall back on contrasting the ANZ-Suncorp competitive outcome with a fantasy merger of Suncorp and Bendigo Bank.

Again, as I wrote last August, the legislation does not empower the ACCC to assess a proposal against a fantasy alternative.

The ACCC might just as well have used the fantasy sale by the CBA of its home loan business to Suncorp as the competitive comparative.

Now, yes, you might want to see a hundred banking flowers bloom.

But as I’ve explained – and lamented, repeatedly, and decades ago - the ACCC buried that prospect when it happily ticked through successive big bank buys of regional banks.

This included allowing Westpac to buy St George – an utterly inane decision that made a serious difference to competition in banking in NSW, and also buried forever any prospect of a merger or association of regionals to fight the big four.

Yet, the ACCC embarked on a regulatory frolic that has run for two years, seriously, negatively, inappropriately and so quite outrageously interfering with the lives of a lot of people.

Heads should roll. Heads must roll.

Two other matters from Tuesday, which I will address in coming columns.

Is Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock utterly delusional?

The question is posed, with the disclosure from the minutes of the RBA’s first meeting back for the year, two weeks ago, that the board considered another rate hike, alongside the unchanged rate decision that it actually delivered.

The second was the disclosure by Australia’s biggest and most globally significant company BHP, in the fine print of its actually unchanged profit announcement, that over the next four years it intended to pour around $70bn into project development.

Will that money be spent in Australia?

It clearly won’t be spent in Queensland.

Originally published as Australian Competition Tribunal ruling proves ACCC hasn’t a clue about competition laws