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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1709 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Humphries only went downwards from there. His arguments did not get any better after that. The fact is, of course, that what is being proposed here is a forum set up under the auspices of the executive arm of government to assist the executive arm of government in implementing government policy. Mr Humphries seems to think this is an extraordinary notion. I do not think it is an extraordinary notion at all. It is a very common practice, I would have thought, in the field of government for governments to set up forums to assist them in implementing their policies. All that this motion is doing is saying how, in our opinion, you should be going about your business as a government - as I said before, the Government is accountable to the Assembly - that you should be doing it in this way, that you should have a forum which advises you on how to go about the business of implementing competition policy, and that that should include representatives of the range of organisations referred to, in order to ensure that the range of considerations that might be relevant to the implementation of competition policy, the concerns that were raised by the committee, can be properly considered.

When you hear Mr De Domenico talk, Mr Humphries, about what competition policy means to him, you feel all the more inclined to want to have this kind of thing. Mr De Domenico's understanding of competition policy is fairly superficial.

Mr De Domenico: It is the same understanding as Paul Keating had.

MR WHITECROSS: I am afraid that it is not, Mr De Domenico.

Mr De Domenico: Yes, it is. He wrote the Bill for us.

MR WHITECROSS: The fact is that one of Mr De Domenico's - - -

Mr De Domenico: And Ms Follett said yes to it when she was the Chief Minister.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

Mr De Domenico: The lady you knifed in the back said yes to it.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR WHITECROSS: You just cannot keep him quiet, can you? The problem with Mr De Domenico is that he confuses support for competition policy with support for everything that various governments do in the name of implementing competition policy. The Labor Party might support the principle of competition policy, but that does not mean that we support everything conservative governments do in the name of competition policy. It does not mean that we support everything Mr De Domenico does in the name of competition policy. We have a concern that, in relation to the implementation of competition policy, there are ways of doing it which will be hostile to the interests of communities, that community service obligations and other concerns of government will be lost in the process of implementing competition policy, and that there are ways of

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