Gina Cass-Gottlieb can’t be a credible chair of Australia’s competition regulator — unless you think a key player for the country’s most powerful oligopolist should be in charge of regulating it, and every other competition issue.
That of course is the Australian way — we’re a country run by mates, and mates of mates, where the foundational doctrine of the current government is “we look after our mates”. Particularly when they’re Rupert Murdoch’s mates.
Cass-Gottlieb is more than a Murdoch mate. She’s been a lawyer for Lachlan Murdoch. That in itself isn’t enough to disqualify her — top lawyers work for the biggest clients. In the specialised field of competition law, any serious contender for the top job at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission who isn’t a lifetime public servant is going to have history with some of the biggest companies in the country.
Indeed that, in part, is what makes appointees with private sector experience attractive. Businessman Graeme Samuel was heavily criticised by Labor when the Howard government appointed him to the ACCC but he turned out to be a strong and effective chair, one who made plenty of enemies among his former business peers.
But Cass-Gottlieb is a director of the Murdochs’ family trust, Cruden Financial Services, with a 12.5% vote. According to The Australian Financial Review, she was Lachlan Murdoch’s pick. That’s not a role merely for a talented lawyer, but for a trusted insider in one of the world’s most powerful families.
News Corp already dominates the Australian media industry across newspapers and subscription television services, and controls the primary real estate website. It is looking to expand into gambling to escape the shrinking world of media, and in the meantime is fighting a rearguard action against big tech companies in which the ACCC, under current chair Rod Sims, has been a key player.
The ACCC is crucial to both these News Corp strategies in Australia — in approving any major gambling acquisition, and in imposing more controls on Google and Facebook and any other online platform that threatens Murdoch interests.
Not to mention other transactions that might strengthen the Murdoch family’s competitors in various industries.
How Cass-Gottlieb thinks she can credibly steer the regulator through the coming years with her links to the Murdochs is a mystery, even if she severs all links with the family. No one can guarantee that, following her ACCC stint, she won’t return to the Murdoch fold.
It’s less of a mystery why Treasurer Josh Frydenberg appointed her. The appointment is a gift to the Murdochs, to ensure their loyalty in the election campaign, to indicate that the government will continue to assiduously look after the local interests of the Murdochs, as it has been doing in the campaign against Google and Facebook based on the lie of stolen content (the Murdochs love lies about stolen things) which is reaping the company tens of millions of dollars.
It’s also a personal signal from Frydenberg that he hopes for the Murdochs’ blessing to take over from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, ahead of Defence Minister Peter Dutton, who is currently better placed to succeed or knife Morrison. After the JobKeeper scandal, Frydenberg is damaged goods, while Dutton has used warmongering against China to make every post a winner. Frydenberg will be hoping Sky News swings behind him if push comes to shove either before the election or next year.
As for effective regulation of competition in some of Australia’s biggest markets, that’s a secondary interest.
The LNP have clearly given up hope of winning the next election. Nothing left to do now but poison the wells.
They did that at the last election too.
I interpreted it as absolute desperation to try and win the election at all costs. Albanese’s suggestion of a federal ICAC may have spooked them even more.
Until the traditional panic buying of toilet rolls, there was no shortage of Labor promises.
Results are more like hens’ teeth.
Is there no other response by Tory defenders when faced by incontrovertible corruption than to say, without bothering to produce evidence, “well, the other side does it too”?
The Oils had a song – ♪♪Short Memories♪♪ – which covers the rusted on, wilfully purblind.
Too many wells have been already poisoned by the planting of contracted liberal party has-beens and coulda-beens in senior jobs. Some of the worst of them have even been employed “for life”.
Every day the news of these appointments gets more depressing. AThe LNP government appoints a Murdoch mate to the ACCC – who’d have thunk it?
I think the general purpose of competition regulators in Australia is to reduce things to oligopolies or preferably duopolies. The ghost of Menzies two airline policy reverberating forever. More broadly the role of Australian regulators generally is to make sure the industries they regulate are “sustainable” that is, profitable. So in terms of outcomes, it doesn’t matter much who got the job. But yes another blatant and depressing instance of the game of mates.
can these decisions be undone, under a new government?
We can only hope. A lot of “look after your mates”, such as one in Brisbane the last time the fools ran Queensland, can be very expensive to undo.
Easily.
if not legislatively then golden handshakes.
Sorry, Phryne, in most circumstances this would work, however, approaching the new chair of the ACCC would be considered political interference.
It would be better to create a new statutory body, make everyone redundant in the ACCC, and ask for applications for the new positions in the new body or bodies.
Almost the same as Mike Baird did to ICAC after they took out 11 MP’s of the Liberal Party for election funding irregularities and his predecessor for a bottle of Grange and the strong smell of other things.
This in fact did not deter ICAC, however, Murdoch’s trustee may find a more attractive offer elsewhere.
To torture and mangle the Hitch, “An blatantly political appointment may be terminated without the taint of political interference.“
Mostly, no.
Abolishing the statuary body would be needed to reverse some of these most egregious transgressions.
The ACCC needed to be reviewed and reformed, just as the APRHA needs to be assessed as well.
Then explain the outcome that Baird achieved with NSW ICAC without abolishing the statutory body.
What about an ICAC with teeth enough to investigate the ACCC ?
Corruption, Rorts, Nepotism,Morrison, Lies, Integrity. . Pick the odd word out.
What’s difference between a Murdoch mate and one of this government’s?
Just how morally bankrupt and corrupt is this government and when will we find out, if ever.
And starting from Fraudberg’s ministrations as the Environment minister, he looks completely at home paddling around in their cesspool.
See him get a BJ from 7.30 last night?
We’re finding out every day…..
…and the animals looked from man to pig, and pig to man, and none of them could tell the difference.
The point of the fairy tale is that there was never any difference.
The fairy tale was about Communism and Fascism and how those in power were more “equal” than everyone else.
As I said.
Do you know the old song, sung to the tune of the Red Flag (not the Internationale as oft thought), “The working can kiss my arse, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last!”
FIIK