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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2247 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Rent inequities is another issue which is critical to small business in this town. If people do like shopping in supermarkets for their convenience, there may be some creative ways that we can accommodate local business concerns at the same time as meeting consumer needs. We do not have to go down the path of letting big chains build and run supermarkets just because it has been done in the past.

Just yesterday we talked about the Gungahlin Town Centre and how it is an innovative step towards making a shopping precinct more friendly. We can think of innovative ways of helping small businesses thrive and survive, and not end up with a set of shops in the ACT that is exactly what you would find in any other town around Australia or, increasingly, as you would find in the United States. In a recent report of the Retail Development Policy Review Panel prepared for the Victorian Government it was recommended that a State retail development policy should be developed. The panel concluded that the retail sector would not necessarily provide the much sought after level playing field for all players if left to its own devices.

The Greens do not want to prop up inefficient businesses, but we do believe in fair competition. The Greens concur with this view of the Victorian group, and we also believe that, although some of the measures suggested by the Government in their policy are a good first step, much more work is needed. There are obviously broad views and strong views on this issue. I was interested to see the Price Waterhouse report commissioned by the supermarkets that was pushed under our door this morning. They came up with a rather interesting suggestion - one suggestion only, amongst many - that we could have subsidisation for small shops. That sort of suggestion has the image of "the shop for the poor people", the sort of St Vincent shop for the poor people. It is such an unusual option. Obviously we have a lot of people out there who could come up with other thoughts. I cannot say that I would concur with that one, but who knows what will come up if we actually open our minds to what people have to say.

We have seen a good example of the power of the corporate giants. They have taken on an expensive campaign. I will be very interested to see the costs of the ads in the Canberra Times and the cost of the work hours of staff who have been employed, at present, to present customers with petitions. We can see the power of that sort of information and misinformation as well, which, very unfortunately, has been a part of this campaign, where people have entered supermarkets and been asked to sign petitions because, "They are going to have all the shops shut in Canberra by 4.00 pm", or, "Please help me save my job, even though I work in a group centre". When you look at the words on the petition, they are very general. They say this is signing in support of regulation of trading hours; nothing specific; a petition against the proposed legislation, and nothing about what the legislation is. How well did Woolworths brief the people that they gave the task of presenting petitions to customers? I think it is definitely a very worrying event and we have written to Woolworths asking them how they have briefed their staff. Obviously it has not been a very successful briefing because of the range of information and misinformation that has come out.

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