Page 2450 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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Government, which will not be brought into being with legislation in this session of parliament.
Mr Acting Speaker, the paucity of legislation on the table and for consideration by this house is well demonstrated by a mere glance at the business paper this evening. All day we have been doing little but debating ministerial statements, and we will continue to do that tonight. The fair trading legislation promised by the Chief Minister should be fairly quick to draft, being based, I assume, on the New South Wales model. I hope that the Chief Minister's intention in this regard will soon be fulfilled by the tabling of that legislation for consideration. That will provide at least a backing for a code of ethics. We can only hope that the code of ethics to be negotiated between retail tenants and the owners of major retail premises will be adequate.
We return to the problem in this regard of the inequality of bargaining power between the tenant and the commercial shopping centre owner. It was argued in the report that legislation may not be necessary in the ACT, as opposed to those States that have adopted the legislative model, because the select committee was not convinced that there were sufficient instances of abuse to warrant the legislative solution. Mr Acting Speaker, I would suggest that the fact that retail tenants were reluctant to come forward and quantify the number of times that they have had complaints is not a sufficient basis on which to conclude that all is well in this field.
Dissatisfaction, fear and concern are felt by retail tenants, particularly the small business owners, the franchisees of major chains in the major shopping malls in Canberra, who in many cases are family groups that may well have mortgaged their residential homes to set up the small businesses. At the moment they are completely at the mercy of the dictates of the shopping centre owners. They can be forced to move about in the Belconnen, Tuggeranong or Woden malls. The Australian Labor Party has constantly been receiving complaints from these people, and that is why it was made a clear policy of Labor before the last election to introduce legislation. I am sure that similar complaints had been received by the Residents Rally and that this explains the clear statement of policy in the Residents Rally manifesto that a legislative solution was necessary.
Mr Acting Speaker, the Opposition is disappointed that the Government has taken the view that legislation is unnecessary and that a code of ethics, backed by fair trading legislation, will suffice. We would reject that view but, given the Government's statement of intent, we can only hope that the fair trading legislation that it promises will be introduced promptly and will be adequate to provide at least some statutory protection for the small retail shop lessee in the ACT.
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