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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2422 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Would the benefits associated with that be greater than the costs? That is something that we have yet to examine properly. It disappoints me that Mr Humphries should say, "Yes, you can examine that, but while you are examining it we are going to proceed and allow retail space to expand".

There are other reasons why shops are not surviving. I would suggest that one of them is the growing deregulation of petrol stations, allowing them to carry what are effectively supermarket foods. If you wish to protect the small shopping centres in the suburbs, then you need to look at what is happening with petrol stations. Once again we come back to a cost-benefit analysis. Are we going to try to assist the petrol station owners, who are also having some financial difficulties in the current environment, or are we going to help other small shops? A cost-benefit analysis will always come into our thinking. To say that we are going to help small shops or we are not and that changing the trading hours will give us the solution is to totally oversimplify the matter. We really must work on it and look at it in the appropriate way.

Mr Speaker, earlier Mr Humphries referred to the Price Waterhouse study which was commissioned by the Australian Supermarket Institute. Of course, it was commissioned by the institute. Mr Humphries's accusations against Price Waterhouse would suggest that if somebody commissions a study then there cannot be an independent analysis. I think it is important for us to be aware of who commissioned the study and to consider whether that has overtones, but Price Waterhouse is a firm whose work Mr Humphries would normally have a reasonable respect for. It is one company that I would think Mr Humphries would be prepared to ask to do some analysis for him. On page 3 they say:

The evaluation notes that the Government has not established causal links between town centre trading hours and the declining fortunes of suburban supermarkets and shopping centres.

If, firstly, you are able to establish those causal links and, secondly, you can show that the solution you have provided will actually resolve those problems, then I will support your legislation. You have not done that. The costs are great and the benefits are few. That is before we begin to look at the issue of consultation. I am conscious that the Government, in preparing Striking a Balance, had some consultation with key players - lengthy consultation, I understand - but one group is missing out. We can now see the community reaction and perhaps it is time to stop and say, "Perhaps something is wrong. Perhaps all those people, the 40,000 of them, are not being tricked". (Extension of time granted) Perhaps all those people are not being tricked in the way Ms Horodny thinks they are being tricked. Perhaps she was not correct when she said that not everybody you come up to with a petition reads it but simply says, "They are going to close my supermarket at 4 o'clock! Good heavens! I will sign that".

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