The Treasury’s website is
http://www.treasury.gov.au. It includes past issues of the Economic Roundup. Some of the other items posted on the website since the previous issue of Roundup that may be of interest to readers are listed below.
Working papers
2006-02: The concept of competitiveness (April 2006)
John Hawkins
A number of concepts of ‘competitiveness’ are applied to national economies, not always clearly or helpfully. This paper suggests a possible taxonomy of these concepts, and applies them to Australian data. Australia performs well on the internal competitiveness of its markets. It also does well in measures of competitiveness based on other fundamental drivers of economic growth. Other indices of competitiveness, comparing prices and costs in Australia with those overseas, suffer from conceptual and measurement problems and are therefore of limited value.
Consultation papers
Corporate and financial services regulation review (April 2006)
The Consultation Paper contains a variety of corporate and financial services regulatory issues that reflect the feedback that has been provided to the Government, as well as information which has been gathered through specific reviews. The paper covers the areas of financial services regulation, company reporting obligations, auditor independence, corporate governance, fundraising, takeovers, collective investments and dealing with regulators.
Component pricing (March 2006)
The Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) 2006 responds to the increased use of component pricing. The draft amendments will mean that consumers will not have to perform a calculation to determine the total price they will be required to pay for goods or services. This will help consumers to compare the price of similar products and make informed purchasing decisions. The draft amendments do not prohibit component pricing. Instead, corporations will be required to include a prominently displayed, single figure, total minimum price when making price representations.
Other publications
The Australian Guidelines for Electronic Commerce (March 2005)
The Australian Guidelines for Electronic Commerce seek to enhance further consumer confidence in electronic commerce by providing guidance to businesses on how to deal with consumers when engaged in business to consumer electronic commerce. The guidelines update and replace the Australian E-Commerce Best Practice Model, which was released by the Australian Government in May 2000.