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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2418 ..

Mrs Carnell: Sorry. Does that mean we are dumping mental health legislation?

Mr Humphries: No, it is a sunset clause.

MR BERRY: No, no. You said, "I am going to dump it anyway. It is finished in two years - - -

MR SPEAKER: Order! Do not anticipate debate.

MR BERRY: This is finished in two years. It is finished in two years. It is just a joke. This is all just shadow dancing, smoke and mirror stuff. You are not fooling anybody out there with this policy. It does not do anything for small business. Mr Speaker, sensible people out there know what this is all about. You ought to vote against your own Bill. It is stupid. I am disappointed that the Greens have been sucked into this. It does nothing that they want to achieve. In fact, it does the reverse. I am sorry to see them supporting this. I think it does them no credit. I urge them, in the short time that they have available this evening, to reconsider their position.

MR SPEAKER: We have all night, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: Well, I can arrange that. Mr Speaker, I urge them to vote against this Bill. We have the ridiculous situation that a committee is going to have a look at this issue, broadly, and we have the Greens in a situation where they are going to kill off a need for the committee, effectively, by implementing this silly legislation. I just cannot believe that they would be involved in it.

MR MOORE (11.17): Mr Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise for the first time to speak on this issue at the in-principle stage of this debate. One of the important things that each member is trying to do is to work out a cost-benefit analysis on this legislation. On the one hand, we know that there are a number of costs. Mr Berry has carefully highlighted those costs, so it is not necessary for me to go over them again. On the other hand, the Government and the Greens claim that there are a whole series of benefits in this trading hours legislation. If the Deputy Chief Minister were here, he could probably explain in detail what those benefits were. Instead, we had Mr Humphries attempting to explain the benefits - except that he did not. What Mr Humphries did instead was challenge us to say what is a better way of dealing with this. The reason he was asking for a better solution was that he knows in his heart of hearts that the benefit side of this cost-benefit analysis is very low indeed. In restricting trading hours, there simply are no benefits. What we have on the cost side is quite clear. We hear the community crying out that this legislation is not going to be particularly helpful. Even those you would expect support from mustered only three or four dozen people - very genuine people - when they attempted to rally today.

Mr Humphries: Because they were off making some money and trying to run their businesses, which are under threat.

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries interjects that people are trying to make money running their businesses. When people feel strongly about something and they are called to a rally, they know how important that rally is. It is clear - - -

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