I ntroduced as part of the Hilmer reforms of 1995, national competition policy (NCP) is a cooperative Federal-State attempt to broaden the scope of competition and develop a more coordinated approach to reform. The main provisions are set out in the Competition Principles Agreement (CPA). Some competition reforms were already in place before NCP was introduced. For example a few individual governments had earlier opened up infrastructure monopolies such as gas, electricity, water and transport to wider competition. The NCP framework took these reforms under its wing and embraced many new initiatives which sought to: This paper is an amended version of a talk given to an FMC Conference on the Future of Competition, September 2001. The author is indebted to Gary Banks, John Cosgrove, John Quiggin, Denise Leslie and two anonymous referees for helpful comments, but the views expressed are entirely his own.