Australia: Competition watchdog’s first ever agricultural commissioner

Farm Institute executive director Mick Keogh is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s first ever agricultural commissioner, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has announced.

Mr Keogh is a leading agricultural analyst and a former head of the government’s now-defunct National Rural Advisory Committee.

He will work with the ACCC’s Agriculture Enforcement and Engagement Unit, a 12-member team that’s been operating since late 2015, to identify competition and fair trading issues in the ag sector.

The government promised to appoint an ACCC agricultural commissioner as part of its Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper.

Mr Joyce said the appointment will strengthen the ACCC’s capacity to recognise and deal with competition issues in the ag sector.

“You’ve got to make sure that within the group of people who look over deals to see if there’s any anti-competitive or anti-market issues, whether there’s inherent unfairness, that you have people there that have that deep corporate knowledge of how the industry actually works,” he said.

Full content: ABC News

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