Category: Reports, submissions and white papers

Submission on the final report of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry

With Darcy Allen, Dirk Auer, Justin (Gus) Hurwitz, Aaron Lane, Geoffrey A. Manne, Julian Morris and Jason Potts

The emergence of “Big Tech” has caused some observers to claim that the world is entering a new gilded age. In the realm of competition policy, these fears have led to a flurry of reports in which it is asserted that the underenforcement of competition laws has enabled Big Tech firms to crush their rivals and cement their dominance of online markets. They then go on to call for the creation of novel presumptions that would move enforcement of competition policy further away from the effects-based analysis that has largely defined it since the mid-1970s.

Australia has been at the forefront of this competition policy rethink. In July of 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) concluded an almost two-year-long investigation into the effect of digital platforms on competition in media and advertising markets.

The ACCC Digital Platforms Inquiry Final Report spans a wide range of issues, from competition between platforms to their effect on traditional news outlets and consumers’ privacy. It ultimately puts forward a series of recommendations that would tilt the scale of enforcement in favor of the whims of regulators without regard to the adverse effects of such regulatory action, which may be worse than the diseases they are intended to cure.

Available in PDF here.

Submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry

With Gus Hurwitz.

Executive summary: The analysis in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Preliminary Report for the Digital Platforms Inquiry is inadequate in several ways, most notably:

  • It mischaracterises the relationship between changes in the economics of media advertising and the rise of digital platforms such as Facebook and Google.
  • Its analysis of the dynamics of media diversity is misguided.
  • Its competition analysis assumes its results and makes unsupportable claims about the division of advertising markets.
  • It is recklessly unconcerned with the freedom of speech consequences of its recommendations.
  • It fails to recognise, and proposes to supplant, the ongoing social negotiation over data privacy.
  • It provides a poor analytic base on which to make policy recommendations, as it applies a static, rather than dynamic, approach to its analysis.

There is a real danger that if the policy recommendations outlined in the preliminary report were to be adopted, Australian consumers would be severely harmed.

Available here.

What does the blockchain mean for government? Cryptocurrencies in the Australian payments system

With Sinclair Davidson and Jason Potts

Executive Summary: This paper introduces the radical opportunities that the invention of distributed ledger technologies offer for government, using the Australian payments system as a case study. The paper presents a model for the reform of government in light of the blockchain based on the new comparative institutional economics literature. In response to invention of the blockchain, governments should:

  • Allow firms to experiment and introduce blockchain enabled services – that is, take “permissionless innovation” approach.
  • Adapt regulatory environments to accommodate the use of blockchain applications where those applications cross over existing regulatory requirements – for example, in the space of taxation, and financial and prudential reporting.
  • Directly adopt blockchain technologies for delivering government services and to enhance (or replace) existing government processes.

Available in PDF here.

Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Collection Models for GST on Low Value Imported Goods

With Sinclair Davidson

Introduction: The Productivity Commission (PC) Discussion Paper, Collection Models of a GST on Low Value Imported Goods, suggests that the inquiry that the PC has been directed to pursue is somewhat of a fait accompli. The legislation enacting this policy change (Treasury Laws Amendment (GST Low Value Goods) Bill 2017) has already passed the parliament with broad parliamentary support.

However, the parliament’s decision to delay the implementation of this policy by one year (the original legislation introduced to parliament was scheduled to begin in July 2017) provides an opportunity for the PC to make clear the practical and philosophical problems with the legislated scheme. A clear statement that this scheme is not in the interest of consumers, is unlikely to be effective, threatens Australia’s participation in the global internet commerce economy, and casts Australia as a bad global actor in international taxation, would, in our view, have a concrete public policy impact. The parliament is capable of amending the legislation in response to this investigation, and the government has significant discretionary power to adjust or mollify its implementation.

Available in PDF here

The South Australian Major Bank Levy: Arbitrary, unjustified, and harmful for South Australia and the rest of the country

With Sinclair Davidson

Introduction: In the South Australian state budget 2017-18, South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis announced that the state government intended to introduce a South Australian Major Bank Levy, one of two revenue measures “to help us meet the cost of our significant support for driving economic growth and creating more jobs”. Treasurer Koutsantonis made clear that this levy was explicitly modelled on the Commonwealth government’s Major Bank Levy, which was announced in the May 2017-18 Commonwealth budget and passed the Commonwealth parliament in June.

Banking is a key sector in a modern economy. Banks and the financial markets they serve work to allocate capital across the economy to its most efficient purpose. The health of the banking sector is closely related to the health of the economy in general; likewise, an unstable and inefficient banking sector often causes, or is at least a leading indicator of, turmoil in the general economy. The centrality of banking and financial markets to economic prosperity and recession throughout history is reason to subject public policy proposals that affect banking markets to particular scrutiny.

This paper is an examination of the South Australian Major Bank Levy. The South Australian Major Bank Levy is intended to exactly replicate the Commonwealth Government’s Major Bank Levy but at the state level. Accordingly, it applies an additional 0.015% tax on South Australia’s share of the total value of bank liabilities that are subject to the Commonwealth Major Bank Levy Act 2017. That levy consists of a tax introduced on a range of liabilities held by the five of Australia’s largest banks – the Commonwealth Bank, the ANZ, the National Australia Bank, Westpac and Macquarie Bank. While these banks are not explicitly named in legislation, they are subject to the levy because they each have total liabilities greater than $100 billion – raising the prospect of new banks being added or of existing banks dropping off the list.

Both levies apply to the total liabilities held by each bank with the exception of that bank’s additional Tier 1 capital, its deposits protected by the Financial Claims Scheme (that is, its government guaranteed deposits), an amount equal to the lesser of the derivative asserts and derivative liabilities of each bank, and its exchange settlement account held with the Reserve Bank of Australia.

This paper finds that the South Australian Major Bank Levy:

  • will be economically harmful to a state that has seen a rise in unemployment and a decline in business investment,
  • lacks serious justification in either taxation or banking policy,
  • represents a rollback of the GST compact of 2000 which required South Australia to remove state taxes on banking and financial services,
  • harms the stability of banking in South Australia and Australia more generally,
  • increases ‘regime uncertainty’ for investors, and
  • there are reasons to believe it has already done harm to the South Australian economy.

Not only should the bank levy be rejected by the South Australian parliament, but parliament needs to work to ensure that markets and investors have certainty that such an arbitrary and harmful intervention could not occur in South Australia in the future.

Available in PDF here.

Submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism

Introduction: It is widely agreed that a free and independent press is an essential part of a democratic order. This submission addresses itself to the implications of the words free and independent. Government intervention in the market for journalism risks undermining the reason we value publicly interested journalism in the first place – its role in providing a check on government and as a third-party watchdog on possible abuses of political, regulatory and fiscal power. When it comes to the profession of journalism and the industrial structure of the media, government is not a disinterested player. Even granting this parliament’s best intentions, government intervention in the media opens up the risk of government interference with the media from future parliaments.

Available in PDF here.

Submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics Inquiry into the Treasury Laws Amendment (GST Low Value Goods) Bill 2017

With Sinclair Davidson

Executive Summary: The elimination of the low-value threshold for the Goods and Services Tax constitutes a new tax on inbound internet trade – that is, it will function as a tariff imposed on Australian consumers.

  • The tax will raise very little revenue and will be expensive and complex to administer.
  • The tax deviates substantially from the existing GST design.
  • The tax is less a tax on consumption but on the reputation of foreign internet businesses.
  • The tax is inconsistent with the government’s commitment to deregulation, the promotion of international trade, and its innovation agenda.
  • The tax rejects principles that the Howard government established in terms of deregulation and the promotion of international trade.
  • The tax will do nothing to address the issue of high retail prices in Australia.
  • While masqueraded as a tax integrity measure, this tax is clearly intended to operate as a form of protectionism.
  • The tax will reduce competitive pressure within the domestic Australian economy, and (as a consequence) expose Australian consumers to government sanctioned higher retail prices.
  • The tax will lead to Australian consumers substituting away from large reputable electronic distribution platforms to more disreputable platforms leading to higher rates of internet fraud and possibility criminality. Product safety and consumer protection rights are likely to be compromised.
  • The tax has few safeguards to ensure compliance and remittance of revenue to the Australian government.
  • The tax contributes to increased levels of regime uncertainty within the Australian policy environment.

Parliament should reject the Treasury Laws Amendment (GST Low Value Goods) Bill 2017.

Available in PDF here.

Question on Notice response to the Select Committee on Red Tape

Red Tape Committee
Department of the Senate
PO Box 6100
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Committee,

At the Sydney public hearings on the Select Committee on Red Tape on 24 February 2017, Senator Dastyari asked me to take on notice a “large ideological question”:

Do we want socialism in one country or perpetual revolution?

I am glad to supply an answer to this question.

Senator Dastyari’s question recalls a debate between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin regarding the future direction of the socialist movement. I doubt a debate between two totalitarian mass murderers remains a major bone of contention within the Australian Labor Party in 2017. As the Senator would know, Lenin dismissed Labor as a “liberal-bourgeois party”.

But as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels so compellingly pointed out in their Communist Manifesto, the bourgeois “has played a most revolutionary
role in history”. They observed that “by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, [the bourgeoisie] draws all nations, even the most
barbarian, into civilization”.

Marx and Engels are spot on. The competitive marketplace, with the innovation and change brought about by free entrepreneurial activity, is itself a permanent revolution. The Labor Party, having presided over much of the economic reform of the last few decades, can rightly take credit for allowing the permanent revolution to be unleashed in Australia.

Contrast this revolution of the free market with socialism in one country. Countries that have experimented with the socialist model of economic control have stagnated. They have been forced to copy and counterfeit living standard-enhancing technologies rather than contribute towards that technological development. Central planning has historically been deeply inefficient and corrupt. The economic problems of planning do not seem likely to be resolved any time soon. The necessity of centralised power in order for planning to function also creates serious problems of political authoritarianism. It could be said that socialism in one country is also a “permanent revolution”, but unlike the market revolution (which grows wealth, living standards, and the ability for individuals to live
the lives they choose) the socialist revolution is a revolution against its own citizens.

It should be clear that I favour the permanent revolution of the market to a permanent revolution of socialist control. However, as recent political events have emphasised, the market revolution also entails disruption, as industries shift across borders and technological change undermines established business models. Furthermore, in our actually existing political-economic system, the heavy burden of regulation, red tape and taxation can make it hard to establish new firms to replaced obsolete ones, prevent successful firms from expanding, and encourage rent-seeking and other prosperity-reducing behaviour.

I advise that the growth of the administrative state, with its network of unaccountable and antidemocratic independent regulatory agencies, and quasi-independent watchdogs and standards bodies, has failed to suppress the market’s permanent revolution, but has placed many obstacles for citizens and workers who have to try to adjust to those changes. If parliament wants to help workers adjust to the permanent revolution, it should be looking to repeal regulatory and red tape burdens that make it harder to find a job and grow a business.

Please do not hesitate to contact me further for more details

Kind regards,
Chris Berg
Postdoctoral Fellow, RMIT University
Senior Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs

The Case for the Repeal of Section 18C

With Simon Breheny, Morgan Begg, Andrew Bushnell, and Sebastian Reinehr

Executive Summary: Research conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs demonstrates that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 must be repealed to protect freedom of speech in Australia. Part A of this report comprehensively outlines the case for the full repeal of section 18C, and the reasons why alternative proposals for reform fail to stand up to scrutiny. The key arguments of this report are that section 18C:

  • Is a restriction on the human right to freedom of speech and an attack on human dignity;
  • Undermines democracy
  • Is inconsistent with a peaceful and cohesive society
  • Punishes defendants through an unfair process
  • Is partially redundant
  • Undermines attempts to combat racism
  • Is unconstitutional.

The report rejects the following proposed compromises as inadequate:

  • Removing ‘offend’ and ‘insult’ from section 18C;
  • Replacing ‘offend’ and insult’ with functionally similar language;
  • Reforming the process for hearing section 18C or the Australian Human Rights Commission.

None of these reforms will address all of the problems created by section 18C. We conclude that section 18C must be repealed in full, along with the associated provisions in Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. Part B of this report outlines the history of section 18C and how it has been interpreted. This information forms the basis for the argumentation in Part A.

Available in PDF here.

Submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue Inquiry into the External Scrutiny of the Australian Taxation Office

With Sinclair Davidson

Introduction: The parliament should unequivocally reject any reduction in the level of scrutiny applied to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

The ATO lists five separate bodies which it considers as external scrutineers: the Australian National Audit Office, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Inspector-General of Taxation, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and the Productivity Commission. However, with the transfer of responsibility for individual complaints about taxation from the Commonwealth Ombudsman to the Inspector-General of Taxation, four of these five oversight agencies have oversight of the ATO only insofar as the ATO is a statutory agency, rather than unique oversight of the ATO.

This system of a single dedicated inspector of the Commonwealth revenue collecting agency is the bare minimum one would require for a liberal democratic tax system. There is a strong case for increased monitoring and scrutiny of the ATO. We believe that this inquiry has been established under a dangerous assumption that the most important independent statutory authority in the Australian government should be freed from the current level of external monitoring. However, the inquiry presents parliament with an opportunity to tighten that monitoring. From both a liberal perspective and a democratic perspective, the ATO needs more scrutiny.

Available in PDF here.