We like competition as consumers, when we’re getting quotes from three tradies for our house renovation or using comparator websites to find the cheapest flight to Hong Kong. We’re not so keen on competition as producers, when that other business wins our customer.

But if we’re honest, we’d admit that it’s that competition from rivals that keeps us sharp. Pushed, we develop a better product. We buy in expertise we didn’t have before. We offer better customer service. And those business-enhancing improvements that we’re forced, by competitive pressure, to keep making are why policymakers on both sides of the Tasman – and overseas – have become keener on making competition work more forcefully.

A question of productivity

Both Australia and New Zealand have had a pitiful productivity record in recent years: more vigorous competition, the argument goes, will force us into upping our game and finding smarter ways of doing things before our trade rivals do. Both governments have consequently been running the ruler over their competition regimes notably Australian, professor Ian Harper’s wide-ranging Competition Policy Review Final Report, in March 2015 and the setting up of a standing ongoing Competition Review in 2023. Australia’s also got a notably pro-competition advocate in MP, Andrew Leigh – current assistant minister for productivity, competition, charities and treasury – so there’ll be ongoing commitment to further reform.

New Zealand initially was less comprehensive, first running some small-scale targeted reviews of its Commerce Act 1986, but more recently finishing a bigger exercise, Changes to Competition Settings, which reported in September 2025 and which will lead to a variety of legislative changes.

Professionals go gangster

You might wonder if these high-level changes to competition policy have any relevance to the common-or-garden accounting practice going about its daily business. It very likely doesn’t have any market power, unlike the big companies in heavily concentrated sectors like supermarkets, so it’s not in any position to throw its market weight about and unfairly exploit its customers or suppliers. And it’s most unlikely to be meeting in the proverbial smoke-filled room to agree to cartelise accounting fees. Isn’t that the sort of thing that only happens in surreptitious meetings on the grubbier fringes of industry trade fairs in Dusseldorf or Yokohama? Professionals, with standards, don’t stoop to those sorts of rorts, do they?

If only.

One dramatic example was the New Zealand ophthalmologists who used a variety of strongarm tactics to intimidate cheaper Australian ophthalmologists out of competing for government-funded cataract operations in New Zealand. That was fairly brazen, but it’s also possible for non-brazen and otherwise respectable businesses to fall into anti-competitive heffalump (fictional elephant from the Winnie-the-Pooh books) traps.

Take the case of the real estate agents in provincial New Zealand who got upset when an online platform, which they used to advertise their real estate listings, proposed a stonking increase in its charges. Collectively, they agreed that they would all pass on the new, higher charges to their customers. The resulting bunfight with the Commerce Commission went all the way to the Supreme Court. It found that the arrangement took away from house sellers the option of some real estate agents offering to absorb or discount the online listing fees, which they otherwise might have done to snag the listing. Sellers were left worse off than they would have been if there hadn’t been the anti-competitive collusion, and hefty fines ensued.

They weren’t the first industry to be caught like this, and they won’t be the last. Earlier, for example, a bunch of international airlines were pinged in various jurisdictions for agreeing to pass on various security charges they had been lumbered with in the wake of 9/11 (2001). They separately also got done for coordinating fuel surcharges.

The lesson is clear: if there’s some cost imposed on your occupation, form your own best commercial reaction about wearing it, or passing it on, or taking it case-by-case, maybe depending on how sweet you want to keep the relationship with a particular customer. Agree with your competitors on a common approach, on the other hand, and the risk is that your competition regulator will bring you grief.

Another area to be careful about is bidding. It’s common for businesses these days to hold ‘beauty contests’ where they tender out their requirements for anything from accounting and audit services to commercial cleaning. It’s really important to steer clear of any coordination or collusion with other bidders, especially as these days the penalties in both Australia and New Zealand for bid rigging can include jail time.

Talent and franchises

There are two more recent developments to keep an eye on. Historically, competition law has not applied to the labour market, but – partly motivated by discovering their heavy-handed use by the ‘tech bros’ in the US – competition authorities are starting to look at non-compete and no-poaching arrangements. Cosy inter-employer agreements are now under the gun. As minister Leigh put it, “From 2027, non-compete clauses will be banned for employees earning under the Fair Work Commission’s high-income threshold, which currently sits at A$183,100. We are also closing loopholes that allow wage-fixing and no-poach agreements between firms, practices that quietly suppress pay and limit opportunity”.

The other is a case that the Commerce Commission has just initiated against some real estate companies that are members of the same franchise chain. The commission says it’s got nothing against franchises in general: “The franchise model is tried and tested, and can work really well for Kiwis”, and there’s no inherent competition issue: “Typically, franchises are organised so that franchisees don’t compete with each other”. But in this case, the commission alleges, they did compete and so shouldn’t have been coordinating their commission rates.

It’s all allegation at this point and who knows what the courts will decide, but there’s a chance that being under the same franchise umbrella won’t allow you to set the same prices as your fellow franchisees if you’re in competition with them.

There’s a common strand here: if you want to stay well clear of the competition regulators’ attention, always paddle your own canoe.