Exposure Draft Bill on increasing penalties for anti-competitive conduct
Treasury has released exposure draft legislation (Treasury Laws Amendment (Competition and Consumer Reforms No. 1) Bill 2022: More competition, better prices) which proposes to increase maximum pecuniary penalties for competition law breaches. In particular, the legislation would increase the maximum penalties references as follows:
$10m would become $50m
10% of annual turnover would increase to 30% of turnover over the period of the breach
for individuals maximum pecuniary penalty would increase from $500k to $2.5million
The submission timeline is tight - just a week - with submissions due by 25 August 2022.