Transforming Australian business attitudes to competition: Responses to the Trade Practices Act 1965

Martin P Shanahan and Kerrie Round

Business History

Martin P Shanahan and Kerrie Round, ‘Transforming Australian business attitudes to competition: Responses to the Trade Practices Act 1965’ (2014) 56(3) Business History 434

Abstract

When the Australian Trade Practices Act 1965 came into force on 1 September 1967 it was vehemently opposed by business as it threatened to reveal the extent of their anticompetitive arrangements. Yet by the time the Act was replaced by stronger legislation in 1974, most firms had accepted that collusion and price fixing were undesirable and that they had to compete. Using newspapers, parliamentary debates, archival records, and the Secret Register of trade agreements introduced by the 1965 Act, this paper examines the transformation of attitudes to competition in the Australian business community.