Independent Review – Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
On 4 February 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) made the Competition and Consumer (Consumer Data Right) Rules 2020.
The Consumer Data Right (CDR) gives consumers the right to safely access data about them, held by businesses, and direct this information be transferred to trusted third parties of their choice. The Rules supplement the CDR legislation by specifying obligations on data holder businesses and accredited data recipient businesses.
Consistent with the Government’s Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) requirements, the report of the Review into Open Banking in Australia, supplemented by additional consultation conducted by the ACCC, has been certified by the ACCC as meeting the requirements of a RIS. The Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR) does not assess the quality of independent reviews used in lieu of a RIS.
The ACCC was compliant with the Australian Government RIS requirements, but the ACCC was not consistent with best practice at the transparency stage. This is because a copy of the review report was not included in the explanatory statement of the rules.
The ACCC has updated the estimate of average annual regulatory costs for the CDR previously made by the Treasury at the time of preparing the legislation (see ‘Open Banking’). The revised estimate is $105.77 million a year. The OBPR has agreed to the revised estimate.