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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2426 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Speaker, another extraordinary argument that comes from the Liberals on this says, "Bad things happen to other people, so there is nothing wrong with us making bad things happen to employees of Woolworths and Coles. Someone else lost their job last year, so we can throw 300 more people out of their jobs and that will be okay". Two wrongs do not make a right, Mr Humphries. You have to do better than that. Mr Humphries has another great argument. He says that it could be worse; that in some places it is worse than it is here. That is not a very good argument. The issue is: What sort of city do we want? What sort of opportunities do we want? The point is not whether it could be worse if we lived in Perth or it could be worse if we lived in Hobart. The issue is what we want in Canberra; what the consumers in Canberra want, not what the consumers in Perth have to put up with or what the consumers in Brisbane have to put up with. What do we want in Canberra?

Mr Humphries has another great argument. It is a great argument for the consumers. He says, "There will be a shop open somewhere. It might not be anywhere near you, but there will be a shop open somewhere. You might have to get in your car and drive to find it, but somewhere in Canberra there will be a shop open". I am afraid that once again that is not a very good argument. This is the retail market rip-off. (Quorum formed) I was explaining for the benefit of the house that in supermarket trading in the ACT after 7 o'clock at night we really have a two-tier market. We have suburban supermarkets - your local supermarkets, many of which are not open after 7 o'clock - and we have big supermarkets, some of them owned locally and some of them owned by large companies. We have two layers. The big supermarkets are spread around geographically, and the group centre supermarkets complement the town centre supermarkets. There are not two different hierarchies in the after-hours trading; there is one layer of large supermarkets and the small supermarkets. That is the nonsense of this proposal.

Mr Humphries and the Greens are proposing to selectively knock out some of these supermarkets. There is one layer of large supermarkets of 2,000-plus square metres, and Mr Humphries and the Greens are going to selectively knock some of them out. Let me illustrate some of the problems with this. Let me first give the example of my electorate of Tuggeranong. In my electorate of Tuggeranong there are a number of large supermarkets. There are six owned by the Woolworths group, one owned by Coles, one owned by Jewel and one trading as Supabarn - that is, nine large supermarkets in my electorate of Tuggeranong.

MR SPEAKER: Tuggeranong, Mr Whitecross?

MR WHITECROSS: My electorate is called Brindabella, Mr Speaker, as you would know, but the town on which it is based is called Tuggeranong. All the large supermarkets are in Tuggeranong. Mr Speaker, contemplate what I am about to say. I know you are following this argument fairly closely. Of the nine supermarkets, Mr Humphries is proposing to close three after 7 o'clock at night. In fact, Mr Speaker, Mr Humphries is going to close two of the three supermarkets that provide any competition to the Woolworths chain. He is going to close Coles and Jewel. They are two of the only three supermarkets in Tuggeranong which provide any competition to the Woolworths chain. That is what I call a brilliant policy! That is what I call looking after the customers! What a nonsense of a policy!

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