SYDNEY - The head of Australia's competition watchdog and his predecessor have joined forces to demand jail terms for price fixers, four years after the Howard government promised the reform.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chair Graeme Samuel said today that the practice, which is suspected tobe at play in the nation's petrol market, was a "criminal action".
Jail time was warranted for company executives who "secretly get together with... competitors to collude with absolute intent to rip-off and steal from consumers", Mr Samuel says in today's The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, describing it as a "cancer on the Australian economy".
His predecessor, Allan Fels, has backed this view, saying the inquiry into petrol prices announced by federal Treasurer Peter Costello earlier this month would have only a "marginal" affect.
"A more productive activity would be to hasten or to accelerate the introduction of criminal sanctions for cartel behaviour across all industries," Mr Fels told the newspaper.
It has been more than four years since the Dawson Review of competition law called for jail sentences to be introduced as a deterrent to collusion, a move supported at the time by the Howard government.
