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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1581 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

We have never supported a moratorium on the expansion of town centres, although we have maintained twice that they need to be looked at in a very careful way. The second mistake or myth perpetrated by Ms Horodny was the suggestion that the Gowrie supermarket was in some kind of trouble. I think she said, "The Gowrie supermarket has closed down". I have a member for Brindabella sitting beside me who lived in Gowrie and who assures me that it has not closed down and, according to the proprietor, has no intention of closing down. He rang the proprietor and found that out. We make jokes about that, but someone's business could be potentially damaged by speculation from people like Ms Horodny that they are about to close down. I hope that she has some sense of regret that she has effectively pronounced to the world the death of a business which is perfectly alive and flourishing. I do not think her look is one of regret; I think it is more a look of stunned bemusement.

Ms Horodny also suggested that the Dickson supermarket was in some kind of trouble. If she is referring to the Woolworths supermarket at Dickson - - -

Ms Horodny: No.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, it must be some other supermarket in Dickson of which I am not aware. The fact is that the main supermarket in Dickson is doing extremely well, and that is not in a town centre. If there is any damage done to the supermarket at the other end of Dickson, it will be because of the presence of the supermarket at the other end of Dickson, not because of a town centre. Her motion is quite irrelevant to that. I think it is quite wrong to suggest that there is a link between what is happening in the town centres and what is happening at the other end of Dickson.

Another important myth she perpetrated was that the jobs in the town centres are not jobs generated by or associated with small business. Ms Horodny ought to take a walk through those town centres and see how many small businesses there are. In fact, by definition, the number of small businesses in those places greatly exceeds the number of big businesses. It would also be, I think, true to say that the number of jobs generated in those town centres by small business exceeds the number generated by big business.

The fifth myth Ms Horodny has perpetrated or mistake she has made is that people operating under chain-store names or nationally branded names are not small businesses. Ms Horodny has obviously never walked into, or inquired about, the nature of many of those businesses. If she had, she would realise that a great number of them - probably the overwhelming preponderance of them - operate as franchisees. The local operator at McDonald's in all likelihood is not a direct employee of McDonald's but rather has bought the privilege of operating a franchise from McDonald's, is a local person, has a local business which employs local people and, in every sense of the word, is a local small business. It is repugnant, I believe, to this place for Ms Horodny to come in here and tell us that town centres are all big business and local centres are all small business. That is simply a dichotomy which she cannot make. I hope that she has taken note of that. This policy, put forward by the Greens, is simplistic. There is a whole series of forces at work in local centres in this city. Not all of them are due to the presence or the expansion of town centres.

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