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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1622 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

There has been plenty of hype about all the benefits of competition, but careful analysis of some of these benefits has demonstrated that these are based on a number of quite unrealistic and potentially unachievable assumptions. The benefits of competition policy could be quite small or even cancelled out by the waste of resources associated with duplication, monitoring, or other added administration costs. There has been no analysis of the downsides of competition, and this was something the committee noted in its report.

The committee took 13 submissions and held a number of public hearings, and, as I said, we did look at the broader agenda of competition policy, including the agreement. Unfortunately, the Government still does not seem to have taken the very important work of the committee seriously. The committee raised many legitimate concerns about the potential negative impacts of competition policy and the way the Government is proceeding with the implementation of competition policy in the ACT. The responses prepared by the Government seem to indicate that they read only the recommendations and not the body of the report.

I would like to make a general point about this. It is very easy to respond to committee reports in a narrow, tokenistic way. A theme I have noticed in responses is, "Oh yes, we agree with this or that, but we are doing it already". This is very disrespectful of committee work. Obviously, a committee recommends something because they do not believe that the Government is adequately addressing the issue at hand. I think it is also inappropriate to read the recommendations in isolation from the rest of the report. The only recommendation the Government responded to enthusiastically was the recommendation that the Bill be enacted, but if you read the body of the report it says:

The Committee considers that the implementation of competition policy may provide some economic benefits to the ACT and consumers, although this has not been shown conclusively, and that the costs and negative impacts have not been adequately investigated. The Committee notes there is little choice but to enact the Bill but believes there must be serious considerations given to developing mechanisms for the protection of social and environmental concerns.

One of the key mechanisms the committee recommended was the establishment of a forum to advise the Government. This forum was to include consumer, union, environmental, business and academic representatives. A common theme running through the submissions and public hearings was the need for public input into the implementation of the reforms. These reforms need close monitoring, and not only on an ad hoc basis through existing consultative mechanisms. Even the Commonwealth Government has established a committee to advise on the regulation legislation review, which includes consumer, union, environmental and business representatives.

It is not good enough to say that the Government will consult through its existing mechanisms. These are significant reforms. The impacts will be felt throughout the community. Some of the existing mechanisms referred to include the budget consultation. I have not seen a very good response about the process for that consultation. We were given outcome statements which were a bit like a policy statement of the Liberal Party:

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