Rod Sims, the chair of the competition watchdog the ACCC, says consumer and competition enforcement and regulation must keep pace as the digital platforms play an increasingly important role in the economy.
Speaking to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce (WA), via a streaming video, he addressed a number of the ACCC’s key concerns about the growing economic power and influence of the digital platforms.
The ACCC’s recent actions against Google are about holding powerful digital platform businesses accountable for representations made to consumers, he says.
Google was last month taken to the Federal Court over allegations the tech giant misled Australian consumers to obtain further personal information it could use for targeted advertising.
“We believe that consumers have the right to know and make informed choices about their use of digital services, particularly how their personal data is being collected and used for the supposedly free services,” Sims says.
“They are not free; everything has a cost.”
He also spoke about the need to address the bargaining power imbalances between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms.
"We are concerned that business, including Australian media businesses, can continue to compete on their merits in the digital age,” he says.
The federal government is working on a mandatory code for digital platforms to pay publishers, to address the bargaining power imbalance between news businesses and Google and Facebook.
Sims also addressed the ACCC’s concerns about how past and future acquisitions of rivals by the digital platforms could entrench their market power, by providing them with advantages of scale and reducing competition.
“What we don’t want is for large platforms such as Google and Facebook to remove possible rivals that may have otherwise emerged, possibly in partnership with others, as vigorous and effective competitors to their core services,” he says.
And the existing regulatory frameworks had not held up well to the challenges of digitalisation.
“Of course our focus is on both consumer and competition enforcement and regulation, so investigating and pursuing what needs to be done to protect consumers and allow businesses to compete on their merits in the growing digital economy is now a core part of the our work, as it needs to be,” says Sims.
“We are optimistic we and our fellow regulators and enforcers around the globe can deal with these issues but it requires a multi-faceted approach that includes competition assessment, regulatory responses and consumer enforcement.”
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