Scrapping South Australia’s restricted shop trading hours is one of the key recommendations from a national review of Australia’s competition policies.

The Competition Policy Review panel also recommends that regulatory agencies should ensure that the voices of small businesses are heard on competition issues.

Chaired by economist and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu partner, Professor Ian Harper, the review panel recommends that the misuse of market power provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act (CCA) should be strengthened.

The report says that while trading hours elsewhere have been deregulated, South Australia, along with Queensland and Western Australia have continued to have restricted opening hours.

“The remaining restrictions create a regulatory impediment to competition by raising barriers to expansion and distorting market signals,” the report says.

“The Panel believes that consumer preferences are the best driver of business offerings, including in relation to trading hours.”

The report notes that Business SA’s submission to the inquiry says that the business association’s 2013 pre-State election survey showed that 73 per cent of respondents supported a move to fully deregulated shop trading hours.

The panel recommended: “Remaining restrictions on retail trading hours should be removed. To the extent that jurisdictions choose to retain restrictions, these should be strictly limited to Christmas Day, Good Friday and the morning of ANZAC Day, and should be applied broadly to avoid discriminating among different types of retailers.”

While ranging across all aspects of competition activity – and included commentary on the pharmaceutical, publishing and taxi sectors – the inquiry focussed on small to medium sized businesses in several particular aspects of its work, including the ability of small supermarkets to compete effectively in the face of powerful protagonists like Coles and Woolworths.

The report acknowledges Business SA’s view that “smaller, independent retailers are not worried about competing with the larger retailers, but are concerned about being pushed out of the market with tactics which will eventually result in a duopoly or monopoly market. This is not only at a supermarket level, but also at an individual brand level.”

The report says: “Small supermarkets allege that the major supermarkets misuse their market power, including through ‘predatory capacity’ and targeting particular retailers.”

“Suppliers raise concerns about misuse of market power and unconscionable conduct by the major supermarket chains.

“The Panel cannot adjudicate whether a breach of the CCA has occurred in particular cases but reaffirms that the competition laws should only prohibit conduct that harms competition, not individual competitors.

The Panel recommends strengthening Section 46 of the CCA, the misuse of market power provisions.

“Section 46 should … prohibit conduct by firms with substantial market power that has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition, consistent with other prohibitions in the competition law. It should direct the court to weigh the pro-competitive and anti-competitive impact of the conduct.”

The report also says that the panel “believes that small business needs greater assurance that competition complaints can be dealt with.”

“The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission can play an important role in connecting small business to alternative dispute resolution services.

“Developing industry codes with practical and effective dispute resolution processes can also help to ensure that small business has access to justice.”

The review found that further micro-economic reform was critical to improving Australia’s productivity performance and to sustaining living standards into the future.

“Reinvigorating Australia’s competition landscape is a central element of a new round of microeconomic reform,” it says.

The Panel recommends replacing the National Competition Council with a new national competition body, the Australian Council for Competition Policy.

“This should be an independent entity and truly ‘national’ in scope, established and funded under a co-operative legislative scheme involving the Commonwealth, States and Territories,” the report says.