Australian regulators are in the middle of a decade long investigation into digital platforms and data practices, with far reaching implications for competition, privacy and media reform.

When the Australian Senate’s Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media released its much anticipated review in early August, much of the initial focus was on the implications for TikTok and whether Australia would implement a ban.

The answer was a resounding yes… and no.

The Committee did not recommend an outright ban, but it did recommend the government to ban TikTok on devices that connect into government systems from critical infrastructure sectors – potentially a quasi-ban given the extent of coverage across industries such as food and grocery to financial services, communications, healthcare, utilities, transport, and education.

It also said Australia should follow America’s lead if the US orders TikTok owner ByteDance to divest from its US operations. For good measure, in its report, it described evidence from TikTok to the Committee as evasive, and went even further with fellow Chinese digital giant WeChat which is described as contemptuous of the Australian parliament.

But the review and recommendations went much further than just the expected focus on TikTok, recommending that the government require “all large social media platforms operating in Australia to meet a minimum set of transparency requirements, enforceable with fines. Any platform which repeatedly fails to meet the transparency requirements could, as a last resort, be banned by the Minister for Home Affairs.”

The Senate Committee report is simply the latest in a significant raft of investigations into the Australian digital sector by policy makers and regulators.

Unlike the US, where there is often a political or partisan flavour to the work of regulators, in Australia the work of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Attorney General’s Department and Australian Securities and Investments Commission has spanned two governments (and three parliaments) of very different political hues, yet the change in administration has barely registered on the ongoing work.

In some instances, Australia is leading the world. It’s approach to the impact of digital platforms like Facebook and Google on local media via its media bargaining code is being treated as a template in jurisdictions such as Canada and Indonesia, both of whom have noted how the Aussies called Facebook and Google’s bluff over threats to leave the country, with both big tech giants famously threatening to pull out of the country, and Google’s local chief Mel Silva was still complaining about local regulators as recently as late July.

In other areas such as the regulation of privacy policy, Australia has borrowed and learned from the approach with GDPR in Europe, and may even go further, especially in its treatment of issues such as the tracking of consumers on the internet, and the definition of personal data. Indeed, its current proposed approach to legislation is being fiercely resisted by local adtech and data broking businesses.

But the most sweeping review underway in the country today is that undertaken by the ACCC, in what will be a near eight year-long investigation into digital platforms.

The release of the 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry final report by the ACCC was not final at all, with eight separate discussion papers subsequently released, the most recent of which looked at the data broking sector.

The discussion papers so far include online private messaging, the risk of messaging services in digital scams, the potential for small businesses to be treated unfairly and market power issues relating to Google. Other reports look at the Apple-Google duopoly in mobile app marketplaces, and Google’s near monopoly in Search. On this issue in particular, law firm Gilbert and Tobin note the regulator wants to “mandate, develop and implement a mandatory choice screen for search services.” 

eCommerce, Social Media platforms, digital platform ecosystems (enter the other giants Amazon and Microsoft, standing shoulder to shoulder in scrutiny by the ACCC with their brethren at Alphabet and Apple) and data brokers like Nielsen, Oracle and Quantium are all in the crosshairs of the additional reports, giving breadth and depth to the ACCC analysis.

… and we’re not done yet. The ACCC is likely to produce two or three more interim reports before bringing down a final (that’s “final” final… we think!) report in 2025.