ACCC chairperson calls her a leading mind in competition and consumer law
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced that Commissioner Liza Carver will depart the organisation in mid-May.
Carver, who has chaired the ACCC’s enforcement committee, commenced her latest role in the organisation in March 2022.
“Liza is one of Australia’s leading minds in the field of competition and consumer law,” ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said in a media release. “Her contribution to the ACCC has been outstanding and she will leave an important and lasting legacy.”
Cass-Gottlieb said that Carver had assisted significantly with many aspects of the regulator’s work, including merger review and digital platform regulation.
“Liza’s legal skill and rigour, strategic insights and guidance have shaped our enforcement program in recent years, and her input has been central to many of our most important outcomes,” Cass-Gottlieb added.
Carver called it a privilege to serve as ACCC commissioner with Cass-Gottlieb at its helm.
“The importance of the agency to the welfare of consumers and the competitiveness of the Australian economy cannot be overstated, nor can the diligence and commitment of its staff and commissioners,” Carver said in the ACCC’s media release. “I look forward to watching its successes in the future.”
Before shifting to private practice, Carver was an associate commissioner with the Trade Practices Commission in Sydney and the ACCC between 1993 and 1999, a commissioner with the Australian Energy Markets Commission in Sydney between 2005 and 2008, and a member of IPART from 1997 to 2000.
Cass-Gottlieb expressed gratitude to Carver for the knowledge and experience she brought to the ACCC team and wished her well in her plans for the future.
Carver worked with Herbert Smith Freehills from 2015 to 2022 as a Sydney-based partner focusing on competition, regulation, and trade and handling complex merger clearances, regulatory cases, and the defence of clients in ACCC investigations and legal actions in the energy, transport, manufacturing, retail, and communications industries, according to her LinkedIn page.
She also recorded a stint with Ashurst in Sydney from 2011 to 2015 and was the joint global practice head for the firm’s competition practice. Moreover, she was a partner at Gilbert + Tobin from 1996 to 2011. From 2009 to 2012, she was a director at Airservices Australia in Canberra.
