ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel's latest dismissal of critics has opened another round of debate over the controversial ban on "price signalling".On Thursday night, Samuel told a panel discussion, organised by the Australian Centre for Financial Studies, that the proposed laws were "despite anything you might read elsewhere… entirely consistent with the position that was adopted in the European Union in 1970… [and] laws that have been developed over many years by the attitude of the US Supreme Court".Competition law expert Brent Fisse responded on Friday by labelling Samuel's statement as "incorrect and highly misleading" and said the proposed law was "mindless".There were major differences between US, European and UK laws, and those proposed for Australia, he said in an email to Banking Day."One fundamental difference is that the approach taken in the EU, US and UK requires collusion or strategic coordination of market conduct by competitors," he said. The Australian bill, however, did not require either collusion or conduct such as an invitation to collude "but focuses on unilateral information disclosure".In addition, overseas laws applied generally, rather than being, initially, restricted to the banking sector, and did not rely on a system of authorisations or notifications to deal with necessary exceptions to the law.On Thursday, Samuel told his audience that if four bank CEOs were to reveal to each other their intentions to change interest rates, "that is a cartel, except it's legal". But he also said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had never implied that bank CEOs had engaged in cartel activity.