On 3 September 2026, ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb told the Law Council of Australia's Competition and Consumer Committee Workshop that the new mandatory merger regime is 'the most significant strengthening of the framework in more than fifty years'. She also spoke about digital disruption and market complexity. The ACCC's speech page was not retrievable, so this analysis relies on that confirmed quote and on public sources about the regime itself.
The Chair's description is fair. The question for tech is what it changes in practice, now that the ex ante digital regime Treasury proposed in December 2024 has still not been legislated.
What actually changed
The Senate passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (Mergers and Acquisitions Reform) Bill 2024 on 28 November 2024. Treasury described it as the largest shake-up of Australian merger settings in half a century. Voluntary notification under the new process opened on 1 July 2025, and notification became mandatory on 1 January 2026.
The old model let parties decide whether to seek informal ACCC clearance. The new model makes notification compulsory above revenue-based thresholds, and a deal cannot complete until it is cleared. Law-firm summaries describe a Phase 1 of up to 30 business days and a Phase 2 of up to a further 90 business days. A missed ACCC deadline means the deal may proceed. The same summaries list 'creeping or serial acquisitions' as a distinct threshold category.
That last point matters most for technology. Large platforms have historically grown through a stream of small acquisitions, each too minor to trigger scrutiny alone. A regime that aggregates serial deals targets that pattern directly, and it does so without singling out any sector.
The steelman for going further
The strongest case for a dedicated digital regime is that merger control is a poor tool for entrenched platform power. Merger review looks at transactions. It cannot address how an app store sets payment terms or how an incumbent ranks its own services. The ACCC has argued for years that digital markets tip quickly and that court cases arrive too late.
The Federal Court's August 2025 finding that Apple misused its market power by restricting alternative app distribution and in-app payments is an example. Reporting on the case notes that the ACCC was granted leave in April 2026 to intervene in the remedies phase, years after the conduct began. Proponents of ex ante rules would say a case that slow shows why upfront obligations are needed.
The proposal that has not become law
Treasury's proposals paper ran from 2 December 2024 to 14 February 2025. It would let the government designate large platforms and impose obligations targeting anti-competitive conduct, barriers to entry and exploitation of market power. CSIS describes a model blending the EU's Digital Markets Act and the UK's DMCC Act, with an initial focus on app stores and ad tech and five-year designations. That analysis was published in November 2025, and I found no evidence of a bill since. Trade reporting from April 2026 quotes an ACCC official describing the regime as still a proposal with strong government support.
So on the evidence available, the merger rules are in force and the conduct rules are not.
Why the gap is less alarming than it sounds
First, the merger regime is a general instrument with real teeth. It applies to a platform buying a payments startup, an AI lab or an advertising-technology rival exactly as it applies to a supermarket merger. Tech acquirers do not escape because the digital code is missing.
Second, the evidence on ex ante regulation is unsettled. CSIS's review notes a contested range of estimates: EU and UK impact assessments project net gains, while an industry-funded study commissioned by CCIA projects large Australian losses that competition economists dispute. It also notes that EU compliance costs have exceeded initial expectations. Neither side has proof, which argues for caution before locking in a regime designed abroad.
Third, Australia has a working test case. The Epic litigation shows courts applying existing competition law to platform conduct. The remedies outcome will show whether general law can do the job before a bespoke code is added.
What to watch
The merger regime carries its own risks for innovation. Mandatory filing and standstill obligations add cost and delay to small, pro-competitive deals, including the acqui-hires and tuck-ins that give venture-backed founders an exit. Compressed timelines and deemed-clearance rules help, but only if the ACCC resolves the many routine cases quickly and keeps Phase 2 for deals that genuinely threaten competition. Government has scheduled reviews of the thresholds and the wider regime. Those reviews should test tech deals specifically and publish data on filing volumes, timelines and outcomes for digital targets.
If Parliament does revisit the digital competition regime, it should work from that evidence. Designation should rest on demonstrated market power and harm. Obligations should be tied to specific services and include sunset and review clauses. The merger regime has made Australia's baseline stronger, and that is a reason to wait for evidence rather than to rush legislation.
The Chair's 'fifty years' framing is accurate for mergers. For platform conduct, the fifty-year-old framework is still the one in force.