The nomination of a respected lawyer with strong ties to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch to head Australia’s powerful competition watchdog agency is drawing scrutiny.

       On Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government tapped Gina Cass-Gottlieb to become chairwoman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Her involvement with the Murdoch family stretches back more than a decade.

       U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records list Cass-Gottlieb, who is based in Sydney, Australia, as a manager of a Delaware-based firm that administers Rupert Murdoch’s U.S.-based family trust, which controls the family’s lucrative stock holdings in News Corp. and Fox Corp. Federal Communications Commission records also list Cass-Gottlieb as a director of trust administrator.

       Cass-Gottlieb separately is a former attorney to Fox Corp. Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch.

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       “Ms. Cass？Gottlieb is one of Australia’s preeminent competition lawyers, having been a senior partner in competition and regulation at Gilbert + Tobin for over 25 years,” Australia’s Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said Tuesday in a statement announcing her nomination.

       “During her distinguished career in legal practice, she has advised on some of the largest and most complex competition matters in Australia and New Zealand.”

       But Cass-Gottlieb’s selection immediately made waves in Australia, where some politicians have expressed concern about the Murdoch family’s enormous clout.

       “Is this the same Gina Cass-Gottlieb who is a long-serving director of the Murdoch Family Trustee [sic], and was also Lachlan Murdoch’s personal lawyer?” Australia’s former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, soon after the nomination was announced.

       Cass-Gottlieb’s nomination comes about six months before a key national election, amid a tumultuous political landscape, and one week after an Australian Senate committee issued a blistering report that called Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. the “clearest example of a troubling media monopoly.”

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       In Australia, “the current regulatory environment for news media is weak, fragmented, and inconsistent,” the Senate report concluded. “As a result, large media organisations have become so powerful and unchecked that they have developed corporate cultures that consider themselves beyond the existing accountability framework.”

       Murdoch’s News Corp. owns nearly two-thirds of Australia‘s metropolitan newspapers and popular websites, and it has radio interests throughout Australia. It also has the controlling stake in the Foxtel news network.

       Representatives of News Corp., however, have argued that the dramatic growth of technology platforms, including Google and Facebook, have fragmented the media landscape by also distributing news and information, effectively weakening the sway of Murdoch-owned outlets.

       Despite the report’s findings, leaders of two of the major Australian political parties — the Labor Party and Liberal Party — declined to pursue the matter of media concentration or establish a royal commission, which Rudd and more than 500,000 people who signed a petition had demanded. The petition, which Rudd spearheaded, prompted the Senate’s review.

       Neither Cass-Gottlieb, Frydenberg nor representatives of News Corp. and Fox Corp. responded to requests for comment.

       The Morrison Govt has nominated Ms Gina Cass-Gottlieb to be the next Chairperson of the ACCC.

       Gina is one of Australia’s preeminent competition lawyers & will be the 1st female Chair of the ACCC. I thank Rod Sims for his outstanding leadership over 10+ yrs as Chair of the ACCC. pic.twitter.com/PBfSzRaMKB

       — Josh Frydenberg (@JoshFrydenberg) December 13, 2021

       It was in his native Australia that Murdoch, now 90, began building his empire. He inherited a small newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, following the 1952 death of his father, a noted newspaper editor and celebrated war correspondent.

       That began a restless march spanning seven decades and three continents as Rupert Murdoch assembled dozens of media properties in Australia, Great Britain and the U.S., where he ultimately bought the New York Post and the Fox movie studio, launched Fox News Channel in 1996 and, a decade later, acquired the Wall Street Journal.

       In March 2019, Murdoch sold the bulk of his TV and movie assets to the Walt Disney Co. The Murdoch family held on to Fox News, two national sports channels and the Fox broadcast network. The family’s publishing company, News Corp., separately owns Dow Jones & Co. (WSJ, Barron’s and MarketWatch), the HarperCollins book publishing firm, major newspapers in London and the Australian holdings.

       His oldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, has run Fox Corp. as CEO since the Disney transaction closed in March 2019.

       Both Murdochs serve on the boards of Fox and News Corp. The Murdoch Family Trust controls the family’s stock holdings. The second entity, the Delaware-based Cruden Financial Services, administers the trust.

       According to documents viewed by the Los Angeles Times, Cass-Gottlieb represented Lachlan Murdoch a decade ago in dealings with the Australian government relating to media concentration.

       At the time, Lachlan Murdoch had quit the family enterprise and was trying to carve his own path as a media mogul in Australia.

       With Cass-Gottlieb’s help, Lachlan Murdoch received a 2010 determination from the Australian Communications and Media Authority that he and his father, Rupert, were not related “associates” for purposes of calculating media concentration for radio broadcast licenses and newspaper holdings.

       But that designation became problematic in 2012, according to the documents.

       In 2012, press reports indicated that Lachlan Murdoch had become more involved in his father’s empire and might soon return to the fold. Lachlan Murdoch was also weighing in on leadership determinations at various Murdoch papers. Australian regulators then asked Cass-Gottlieb to clarify Lachlan Murdoch’s “relationship to Mr. Rupert Murdoch.”

       The matter soon became moot. In 2014, Rupert Murdoch restored Lachlan to a prominent role in the U.S.-based media conglomerate to work alongside his brother, James, who was then CEO of 21st Century Fox. (James Murdoch left the family business following the Disney deal.)

       Cass-Gottlieb would replace Rod Sims, who has been the ACCC chairman for 11 years, leading the agency in many major battles with business interests. Sims was quoted in the Guardian as saying Cass-Gottlieb’s experience made her a strong choice to replace him.

       “You wouldn’t want an ACCC that didn’t have people who worked on both sides of the fence,” the Guardian quoted Sims as saying.

       The Australian Financial Review, which is owned by Fairfax Media (a competitor of News Corp.), reported that “it is understood that a majority of states and territories — who must sign off on her appointment — swiftly agreed to Ms. Cass-Gottlieb’s appointment.”

       Staff researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.