Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 896 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

People argued before us that, when something as significant as this is being agreed at upper levels of government, sifts it way down through the system and ends up as a piece of legislation which is going to impact on us, we who live in the ACT, then it might be worth while exposing these concepts to a bit of public debate before they become embedded in legislation rather than after. I think there is a good deal of substance in that. I think very often governments take it for granted that the things that they do are okay and that everybody is going to accept them. I think they also assume that there is sufficient definition of what it is all about. Very often that is not the case. We have made a recommendation on this, and it has to do with setting up the arrangements whereby the making of governmental agreements is formalised in some way so that the community can have an input along the way, as well as bureaucrats, lobbyists and specialists in the field who may have their own particular view which may not be one that the general community would adopt.

I think it was an interesting inquiry. We had some interesting debate about some subjects that I had not debated since I was an undergraduate at university - whether competition is necessarily good, what is public benefit and all those things - but the recommendations are valid recommendations. I commend them to the Government for very serious consideration and implementation.

MS TUCKER (11.00): I would start off with the comment that, while I agree that the committee was looking at Part IV of the Trade Practices Act, I do not quite concur with Mr Kaine that that was all that it was doing, because you cannot separate the competition principles agreement from the actual Part IV of the TPA. The agreement is much broader and does include legislation review, implementation of competitive neutrality and so on. It was a broad discussion, and I think it was appropriate that it was. It was a broad discussion because a lot of people who did come and talk to us did so because they felt that it was the only opportunity that they would get to talk about these other so-called micro-economic reforms, financial reforms that are occurring across the government sector; so it was an opportunity for them. While you may be able to argue perhaps that these were not absolutely directly related, I think there also is a good case for the relevance of that other aspect of the Government's work and the general trend throughout Australia.

This was a very valuable committee, and I also enjoyed it. I enjoyed working for the first time with Ms Follett and Mr Kaine on a committee. I would also like to thank Russell Keith and Beth Irvin for their work, because it was quite challenging at times. We had a lot of material to look at. I think this report was a good result. It will be a very useful reference to explain the different elements of competition policy to anyone who would like an overview of it. There is some thoughtful analysis of some of the dangers within it. While the recommendations may not be very extensive, they deal with some of the major concerns that were raised over and over during the inquiry.

It was clear from the outset that the scope of competition policy in the ACT is much broader than the Competition Policy Reform Bill. The Government, in its submission, went to great pains to explain that the actual Bill does not require any changes to ownership or increased contracting out, but nearly all of the submissions that came to the committee pointed out that not only is the Bill one part of a much larger agenda

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .