Research Project: Cartel Criminalisation
Associate Professor Caron Beaton-Wells
Email c.beaton-wells@unimelb.edu.au
JD Research Seminar, Semester 2, 2010
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regards serious cartel conduct as a ‘cancer on our economy’ equivalent to the theft of millions of dollars from consumers. Serious cartel conduct is taken to refer to collusive practices between competitors – in particular, price fixing, market sharing, output restriction and bid rigging. The most well known case to date in Australia involved the Visy/Amcor price fixing cartel in the cardboard packaging industry. In the last five years, in line with international trends, the criminalisation of serious cartel conduct has become bipartisan policy in Australia. This represents a massive shift in approach to regulatory enforcement, from civil financial penalties to criminal sanctions including jail. Despite the significance of this reform for competition policy and business regulation generally, the debate about it in Australia has been limited. It has focussed largely on the design of the new legislation and the policy for its enforcement, rather than on the original rationale or justification for criminalisation and its likely effects.
This Research Subject will give students an opportunity to examine critically the arguments for and against cartel criminalisation in Australia. Students will carry out research to test the various propositions that have been advanced in favour of criminalisation, including greater deterrence, equitable treatment with other white collar crimes and consistency with an international movement. The subject coordinator with work with students to identify which aspects of the topic they are most interested in and will assist in developing the research question and methodology. Students will be able to select from a range of approaches to the subject-matter, including theoretical, empirical, socio-legal and comparative. The research will be interdisciplinary, giving students the opportunity to consider legal issues from an economic, sociological, criminological, political or philosophical perspective.
Students considering enrolment in this subject should enrol in Competition Law which will be offered as an elective subject in Semester 1, 2010.
More information about Caron Beaton-Wells’ cartel criminalisation research is available on the Cartel Project website.