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Australia has a long history of privately owned utility price regulation, one that is little known. This price control was designed to restrain the market power of several utilities (gas, rail, tramways, electricity, and water). The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to establish what types of price control that were used in Australia in the utilities sector before the First World War and to determine the degree to which this price control influenced efficiency. As price levels in this era were set in legislation, the lack of flexibility led to less-than-optimal outcomes, and eventually and led to new approaches were developed after 1912 to the utilities that remained in private ownership, and in some cases influenced the movement in Australia towards government control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The small to medium-sized enterprise ('SME') sector is the largest and most productive in Australia. Like all established market-based economies, ours is characterised by the use of contracts as a mechanism for exchange. Contracts often require variation in response to variables such as under-pricing, resource availability, changes in scope, and rising product costs, so SMEs (and larger businesses) will frequently encounter the process of renegotiation. The rules applicable to contract renegotiation seldom receive attention in academic writing. Moreover, the attitudes toward, understandings of, and experiences with the doctrine of renegotiation among Australian SMEs are scarcely researched. This article expounds the law of renegotiation before reporting on selected findings from a largescale empirical study designed to fill these knowledge gaps, among others, in the literature. The results provide invaluable insight into how this critically important sector perceives and deals with contract law and the doctrine of renegotiation, and underscores potential areas for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fair Trading Amendment Act 2021 introduced a New Zealand prohibition on "unconscionable conduct" in trade. Previously, the law on unconscionable conduct was found in the equitable doctrine of unconscionable bargain. This article describes how New Zealand law has moved away from equitable unconscionability with this new prohibition. This article critically analyses some of the legal, social and economic justifications for introducing the prohibition, finding that some of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's justifications are not persuasive. The s 7 prohibition is based strongly on an equivalent section in the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). It is argued that long-standing doctrinal issues with Australia's prohibition provided a strong basis for New Zealand to pursue a different standard. Finally, this article explores the "unfair commercial practices" doctrines in the United States and European Union through the lens of anticonsumer practices in digital marketplaces. The conclusion is that the unfair commercial practices doctrine captures a wider range of anti-consumer conduct than does unconscionable conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]