Bob McComas and the Trade Practices Commission : doing it his way\ud

As part of a wider research project on the history of competition law and its enforcement in Australia from 1973 to 2003, the authors interviewed the four Chairmen who guided the Trade Practices Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over this period, in order to get their views of their role in its history. Given the untimely death on July 27 2005 of Bob McComas, the second Chairman who held office for three years from February 1985 to February 1988, it was thought fitting to publish a brief record of parts of the interview with him (which took place on 24 January 2005), in which Bob discussed the background, agenda, legacies and disappointments of his term in office. He was contemplating writing his memoirs, and so he had thought in detail about many of the issues raised during the interview. He regarded himself as significantly different from the other three Chairmen, and made no apologies for his relatively non-litigious approach to preserving the competitive process in Australian markets