Page 2457 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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Connolly's position, how much he really understands and what his appreciation of the problem really is.
What have we heard from the rest of the Opposition? Mrs Grassby tabled the Labor Party's policy. For nearly 15 months the Liberal Party - I am not speaking about the rest of the members of the Alliance Government - has been trying to find out what the Labor Party's policies were. We could not find out. Most of the time its members spoke straight off the tops of their heads. I had a copy, which I still have, of the policies that they published from December 1988 to March 1989, which purported to be those under which they went to the election, under which they claimed to have some mandate when they took office as a minority government in May 1989 and on which basis they denied the other members of this Assembly any mandate.
This mandate question is interesting, but after 18 months we discover that in terms of fair trading practice the Labor Party policy is a letter that was written by Mr Whalan to commercial tenants. What sort of a policy is that? A letter to commercial tenants is what the Labor Party claims to be its policy on fair trading legislation. That is why we heard nothing about fair trading from you lot for seven months, while you were in government.
Some of us in this Assembly happen to be aware of the problems in the business world between landlords and tenants. We know there is a problem. We know that the future of the Territory depends on the private sector, and the small business men and women collectively in this Territory constitute the major part of the private sector. We know that they require some assistance.
I think it was Mr Connolly, in fairness, who made the point that there is often not equality between people who have contracts. What is fair and reasonable when partners who are unequal go into business together needs to be set down. What we are proposing here, and what the committee has recommended, is that such a fair trading practice code - - -
Mr Connolly: Let them work it out between themselves!
MR KAINE: Exactly. Who better to do it than the people who are involved, with some sort of support and encouragement from government for them to get together and identify their differences and set them down in a code of practice?
Does Mr Connolly, for example, imagine that he - somebody who has never engaged in business - is better qualified to come to a place like this and write down the terms and conditions under which people should do business together? Does he really claim that? Frankly, the position that the Opposition has adopted tonight would indicate that he believes that to be true, that he knows better than landlords and tenants what their problems are, that he is
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