The Politics and Practice of New Zealand Competition Law

Abstract

There is a wind of change blowing through global competition law and policy. Four or five years ago, there were signs a front was coming. Progressive commentators were fretting about years of seemingly unchecked market concentration. They were asking whether greater antitrust intervention might soothe rising inequality, prop up wages, and even disband aggregated political power. Some from the vanguard of this movement now occupy the most influential positions in the global antitrust endeavor. In this article, I locate New Zealand’s experience within the international normative debate over the law’s objectives by reference to the country’s modern economic history. And I explain how policy translates into practice at the enforcement coal face in New Zealand. In doing so, I observe that the country’s competition agency, the Commerce Commission, is failing in its duty to investigate and prosecute exclusionary conduct in the jurisdiction.