Page 2863 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.39), in reply: I thank members for their general support for this legislation. The legislation is in some senses a landmark, although, as was indicated by Mr De Domenico and Mr Humphries, the black letter of the law is a re-enactment of provisions already in place at the Commonwealth level.
Mr Humphries asked the question: Why are we going the course of stand-alone legislation in the ACT when generally we tend to favour uniformity? That is a fair question to ask. The ACT up until now has been in a quite different position from any other State or Territory because it has been covered by the extended constitutional coverage of the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act. The Commonwealth Trade Practices Act applies throughout the rest of Australia only to corporations engaged in trade and commerce, because of the constitutional limitation on Commonwealth powers; but in the ACT, because of the plenary nature of the Commonwealth's Territory power, the Trade Practices Act has always had a broader scope and been able to apply to all traders, be they corporations, sole traders or partnerships. Every other State and Territory has its own fair trading legislation. It is better for the ACT, as a self-governing community, to be in the same position.
Mr Humphries did advert to the fact that the real change will probably occur when we start to amend the Act or create the codes of practice. I would say to Mr Humphries that it is probably in relation to the codes of practice that we will start to see the real benefit. That will allow ACT industry, government and consumers to work together to get some industry-specific and ACT-specific initiatives for fairer trading, have them enacted by way of gazettal and force of law as a regulation, disallowable and answerable to this Assembly, and allow us thus to respond to quickly changing needs.
The big advantage of this legislation, which was referred to by the Opposition, is that it may allow us to whittle down the multiplicity of laws relating to specific areas of trade, such as our door-to-door sales Act, and to have general principles of fairness encapsulated in the head Act and codes that are industry specific, and generally, one would think, done with the agreement of industry, to give more detailed regulation in specific industry areas where in the past we have relied upon stand-alone ACT legislation. So, in the long term this does offer the scope for a reduction in the level of regulation.
The point was made, again by the Opposition, that this must be a law that is beneficial both to the consumer and to traders, and the Government would endorse those remarks. It is a feature of this Bill that traders can be consumers. In relation to bringing an action, although you must be a consumer for the purpose of the definition in the Act, "consumer" does not mean only the individual. It can mean another company in certain circumstances. That will allow a fair trader, in effect, to seek an injunction under this legislation to force an unfair competitor to comply with the law. The unfair trader, the person who is cheating, is not only cheating a consumer but also undermining the trader who is acting responsibly and fairly, undercutting his profits and his ability to employ and invest in this Territory. Obviously, fair traders in this Territory would benefit from the ability to seek actions against unfair competition from less scrupulous members of the business community. This Bill will benefit not only consumers as individuals but the business community as a whole, because it is in the interests of the business community as a whole to act fairly.
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