Page 1066 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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Pregnancy (Repeal) Bill this afternoon or this evening, or will he continue to refuse to enter into meaningful consultation with the community about this extremely important issue?
MR BERRY: Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank Mr Humphries for the question, because it is a very easy one to answer, and one that even Mr Humphries would have found easy to answer when he was in government for a short time. Mr Humphries well knows that Cabinet consideration of matters concerning the provision of services is not something that will be canvassed by government members in the lead-up to the budget process. I do not intend to canvass it, and neither would he if he were in government. The Termination of Pregnancy Act is a matter for this Assembly to determine this evening.
MR HUMPHRIES: By way of a supplementary question, I ask the Minister, therefore, whether the claim in today's Canberra Times that $400,000 is to be set aside for this purpose is not true. I take it that it is not true and the Minister will take steps to disabuse the Canberra Times of the misinformed source of this leak.
MR BERRY: I do not speculate about leaks from my department.
Petrol Prices Legislation
MR MOORE: My question of Mr Connolly refers to his announced intention to table petrol price control legislation on Thursday. Will the legislation try to control the wholesalers, the oil companies, or will it be directed towards the small business people who retail fuel in the ACT, the people who are often caught in the middle?
MR CONNOLLY: I do not think it is appropriate for me to comment on what will be in legislation I will be introducing, other than to say that the legislation has already been tabled, although it has not been introduced. We produced an exposure draft for members late last year. Mr Moore would have received a copy. We have always made it clear that our intention is to introduce price control over the wholesale price, to the extent that we have constitutional power to do so, and the retail price and/or the retail margin. The principal players in this game who are affecting the Canberra community and whose practices we want to change are the major oil companies, who are treating this market totally differently to markets in every other major metropolitan city. However, we will be introducing legislation to give us a range of options, and we will be making sure that our quiver is as full of arrows as possible to deal with the oil companies.
MR MOORE: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is there any intention to declare that legislation urgent - for example, under standing order 192 - or will it sit over the winter recess?
MR CONNOLLY: This is legislation of some significance. To take on the oil companies is something that one does not do lightly, and I would expect that members would want to look at the legislation in some detail before it was implemented. So the intention is to bring it on later this week and give members plenty of opportunity to look at it, and to give the oil companies - who keep lecturing us and saying, "Price control is unnecessary; let the market show competitive forces at work" - a last opportunity to demonstrate competitive forces at work. The Liberals like the rhetoric about competitive forces. Let us see whether the oil companies deliver real competition.
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