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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2414 ..

Mr Humphries: But you said they are not fooled by the nonsense we are forcing down their throat.

MR BERRY: Some of them are coming out and saying, "Well, it is not what we want". They are reeling with shock, and saying, "Well, it is not as bad as what could have happened, I suppose. It could have been worse". There will be a few shopkeepers in the smaller sector who will benefit from this. I have no doubt about that. But the demise of a whole lot more is going to be accelerated by this.

Mrs Carnell: How can that be?

MR BERRY: That is the nonsense of this policy. Mrs Carnell has a wide-eyed look on her face. "How can that be?", she says. I just explained it to you. If three or four shops in a community get a 24-hour trader on their doorstep, which is going to happen as a result of this Bill, they are in deep trouble. It does not just go to the small supermarkets in these areas, it goes to the other businesses that are trying to survive as well because they are trying to get some of the drive-by business that is popping in and out of the supermarket. What is going to happen to them? Another casualty, it seems, but you do not care about them. There might be a few casualties in the scheme of things, but that is in accordance with Liberal Party policy, which is that those businesses that cannot survive ought to crash. That is their policy. There will be a few shopkeepers who will crash. "Too bad", say the Liberals. That is their position. Let us not kid ourselves about where the benefits for small shopkeepers are going to come from. They are not going to come from this policy because this policy does not go far enough.

The Liberals, of course, have been talking about how Labor has done nothing. Well, they have to start telling the truth on this. The trading hours legislation in the ACT has permitted 24-hour trading for supermarkets for aeons. Mr Speaker, at any time during self-government they could have traded for 24 hours. The fact is that they began to trade for 24 hours because some of the conditions for workers in the industry changed, and they were able to operate their businesses for longer hours because of those changes. That was an agreement they reached in their own workplaces, and they then started to operate under the ACT legislation in accordance with it. It was not a matter of people doing or not doing anything. It was a matter of businessmen - yes, big business - identifying a service that would be purchased by the community and they took the opportunity. The Greens have some sort of anxiety about big business.

Mr Moore: Some sort of anxiety? It came through very strongly.

MR BERRY: One can be concerned about big businesses if they are parasites on the community, but all big businesses started out as small businesses. Well, I suppose the bad ones start as big and end up being small, but most big businesses start small. Henry Ford and a few others come to mind. Of course, the likes of Henry Ford and some of the other big businesses are accused of being predatory and all those sorts of things, and there is no doubt that history shows many cases of big business having behaved badly. But they do not have it to themselves. There are quite a few cases of small businesses having been criticised as well. This is an issue where the community is queuing for a service. People want to buy groceries at all hours, and they want to buy them cheap.

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