Joyce to pursue competition 'effects test'

New Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has backed the "effects test" recommended by the Harper review of competition policy to give small business owners a fairer go.

In current competition law, a small firm has to prove that a bigger rival is deliberately trying to force it out of business, but under the proposed test it would only have to prove it had been affected by its presence.

"We will try and deliver some form of betterment so that people who are in business will be treated in a fairer way," Mr Joyce told Sky News on Sunday.