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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2411 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

In essence, extended trading hours have been a great advantage to the corporate giants and a great disadvantage to local business. Another interesting point is that when the inquiry into trading hours was conducted most of the submissions, including a submission from BOMA, supported some form of regulation. What the Government needs to do is to regulate hours at group centres as well, we believe, and it obviously needs to look at the whole issue of that expansion of retail space.

A lot has been made about people who may lose their jobs, but what about the jobs that have already gone? The story on the front page of the Canberra Times yesterday is just the thin edge of the wedge. Thirty jobs have gone already because Woolworths has decided to bypass the local abattoir and buy meat from national suppliers. This is a backward step indeed, Mr Osborne, a very backward step. It does nothing for our local economy. (Extension of time granted) Thank you, members. We have heard so many stories of local suppliers who have lost business and have put off staff because nationals and multinationals are not buying from local suppliers. These range from bakers to smallgoods suppliers and newsagents. When a newsagency closes the company that goes around supplying sweets and other goods to that newsagency also has to lay off staff. The domino effect simply goes on and on. These people are not just family members, Mr Speaker. Local businesses support not only local suppliers but also local charities, local schools and other organisations. So protecting the local economy is not only about protecting neighbourhood shops. There are many businesses which are affected because of the increasing power of the major supermarkets, such as small businesses in town centres, local suppliers and neighbourhood shops.

The Greens recognise that many neighbourhood shops have to lift their game and some may not survive. No-one is suggesting that small businesses get something for nothing, but at the moment the corporate giants are certainly getting something for nothing. They are getting huge concessions in town centres in terms of cheap rent or no rent at all. I have already talked about this. This policy clearly is not perfect. We have been very open about the fact that we would like this policy to go a lot further. In fact, it is ridiculous in many ways to define a large supermarket as a shop that is only in the town centre. Clearly, no-one else in this place is going to support any moves to take the policy further, but it is a poor policy to define a large supermarket in this way.

We believe that the current trend towards a highly concentrated retail sector is a form of market failure. We have two choices. We can sit back and do absolutely nothing, as the Labor Party has done, or we can look at ways of rectifying the situation. The Labor Party did not support the proposed moratorium on retail space, so I do not know what they think they would do. That was their opportunity to do something about this. It is not an easy task. This is a highly complex issue. People have brought in many related issues on this, but we cannot just throw up our hands and say that it is too hard. That is not good enough. We are the elected members and we are here to make difficult political decisions. The Greens will continue to lobby the Government on ways to improve the local economy. As a member of the Planning and Environment Committee I look forward, with the other members, to investigating this issue more fully and reporting to this Assembly, hopefully by the end of the year.

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