Project Survey

The Cartel Project team is pleased to provide its report on the findings of a major survey conducted into public awareness of and support for the approach taken to anti-cartel law enforcement in Australia. As far as we are aware, the survey is only the second such survey in the world.

The Survey report is one of three empirical components of the Project and its purpose is to provide robust empirical evidence of the views of the Australian public on the issues involved in the criminalisation of cartel conduct. The other two components are interviews with stakeholders and interviews with prior offenders under the previous civil regime.

The results provide a fascinating insight into what the general public think about such questions as:

• whether the typical types of cartel conduct (price fixing, market sharing and output restriction) should be illegal and whether they should be criminal offences;
• whether the companies or the individuals involved, or both, should be subject to sanctions;
• what the penalties and remedies should be;
• whether immunity for the first cartel member to report the cartel is acceptable;
• how seriously the public rates cartel conduct relative to other crimes; and
• why the public hold these views including views about the harmfulness and morality of cartel conduct.

The survey also provides information concerning the knowledge and assessments of business people, including:

• the degree to which business people know that cartel conduct is against the law, a criminal offence and behaviour to which jail sentences apply;
• the extent to which business people consider it likely that cartel conduct will be detected and prosecuted by authorities and jail sentences imposed; and
• the likelihood that business people will engage in cartel conduct under certain conditions - for example, depending on whether civil or criminal sanctions apply.

The results of this survey are likely to be relevant to anyone interested in anti-cartel law enforcement, but will be of particular significance to policymakers, enforcement agencies, prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges and scholars researching this field.

Public Opinion Survey

This first report provides a thorough account of the results.

Options for downloading the Public Opinion Survey report:

If you have difficulties downloading the whole report please download the whole report without appendices.

• Whole report
• Whole report without appendices
• Preliminaries
• Executive Summary
• Section 1 - Introduction
• Section 2 - Methodology 
• Section 3 - About the presentation of results in this report
• Section 4 - Prior awareness of cartel-related topics
• Section 5 - Business and competition
• Section 6 - Cartel conduct as against the law
• Section 7 - Cartel conduct as a criminal offence
• Section 8 - Reasons for cartel conduct as a criminal offence
• Section 9 - Penalties/remedies for cartel conduct
• Section 10 - Factors bearing on seriousness of cartel conduct
• Section 11 - Immunity policy
• Section 12 - Crime seriousness ratings
• Section 13 - Business group - selection and characteristics
• Section 14 - Business group - knowledge of the law
• Section 15 - Business group - deterrence and compliance
• Appendices A - E 
• Appendix A: Survey questionnaire
• Appendix B: Structure of survey
• Appendix C: Open-ended responses to survey
• Appendix D: Demographic profile of random sample representative of Australian public
• Appendix E: Invitation to participate and plain language statement

Business People Survey

This report provides a supplementary analysis of the views of business people on anti-cartel laws and enforcement. You can link to the Report here.