Page 3046 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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MRS GRASSBY: Mr Kaine said that there was no evidence of anybody who said that once they got into the industry they could not get out. Mr L. Shooks, who has the Caltex station at Phillip, said, "Now, if it was to go we would lose our house, and where would we be going? We would have to go on Social Security", which meant that he had to stay no matter what happened, because that is what he was locked into. He was locked into absolute chaos because of the fact that he could not get out. He had signed a franchise agreement
Some of these people buy these franchise agreements for $400,000. They then need another $100,000 as an overdraft, and they do not get 30 days; they do not get 20 days. As the petrol goes in their tanks the money is sucked out of their bank account, and the oil companies had the hide to come along and say to us what they want done. They had the hide to come along and say that the Planning Minister should, in the planning, make these sites a lot larger. The thing was that they then had the hide to say that these sites were not large enough and, if they were large enough, then they could put in virtual supermarkets. Obviously, the oil companies decided that there was going to be no profit in the petrol; that they would have to work very hard to make their money in the supermarkets. Were we then going to have to compensate supermarkets because they would go broke? Maybe we could put an independent petrol pump outside every supermarket; maybe that would be the way to go.
My argument is that one of the suppliers, one of the franchisees, told us that he could not even sell a red bottle of coke without the company knowing that he had done it. I would like to see the Minister looking into this franchise agreement. As I said before, if Ned Kelly's mother was alive she would not let him play with these people. This is absolute dishonesty. The Minister has proved it. Time and time again he warned them that if they did not do something he would do it; and the Minister did something. He did something about it, and the people in Canberra love it. They are very happy with it. I hope that Mrs Carnell runs this as an election gimmick, as she says she is going to. She will go down like a ton of bricks, because everybody you speak to out there loves the fact that they have cheap petrol. Everywhere I go, people love it, and they say, "When is the Minister going to open up the new service stations?", so that they will not have to drive to Kingston to get their cheap petrol. "When is it going to happen?", is what I get asked everywhere I go, believe you me.
I think I have answered all of Mr Kaine's remarks and proved Mr Kaine wrong. Obviously, he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He does not even remember what he said in his budget speech and he does not remember what was said at the committee meetings. I have answered all those and proved that Mrs Carnell could not do all these wonderful things. As the Demtel ad says, "And there is more. Let's add more". She has added all that. I can prove that she is not much of a businesswoman and Mr Kaine is not much of a businessman.
Mr De Domenico: Madam Speaker, I move for an extension for Mrs Grassby so that she can explain to the house what she means by "Paretian optimality".
MRS GRASSBY: If you were to look it up in the dictionary - you probably could not find it in the dictionary - it means being, as Mr Moore said to me, even-handed.
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