The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb told the ABC this morning that the organisation wanted to deter corporate conduct like that which allegedly occurred when Qantas took bookings for 8000 flights that had already been cancelled.

The highest penalty to date for a breach of the competition law was $125 million imposed on Volkswagon and the ACCC is seeking a much higher penalty when the case is decided in the Federal Court and “would want to get to more than twice that figure”.

“We consider this should be a record penalty for this conduct,” Cass-Gottlieb said.

“The ACCC is on a path of wanting to substantially increase the penalties that large corporations in relation to serious misconduct pay for failing consumers. So this is going to be an important test for us.

“We consider these penalties have been too low. We think the penalties should be in the hundreds of millions, not tens of millions for breaches of keeping consumers accurately informed so that all members of our community understand what they are paying and what they are getting.”

She said the push for greater fines was a process for the ACCC and the court.

“We need to set really high standards of performance (for) engaging with every ordinary Australian consumer,” she said.

Asked if she wanted to scare companies, she said: “We do.

“We are not looking here at a specific deterrence … we want it to be generally across the aviation sector and broadly.”