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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3206 ..

Mr Moore: It will be environmentally sound! They will jump in the car and - - -

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR WHITECROSS: Since they do not know anything about greenhouse, they would not even care about that either. Mr Speaker, so far the Government have flunked all the criteria of what Choice reckons matters to customers. They have flunked them all with this legislation.

Mr Moore: But they are consultative!

MR WHITECROSS: They did not consult them. It is not surprising, Mr Moore, that they do not know that they have flunked them all, because they never consulted them.

Mr Speaker, this is a completely unacceptable piece of legislation. It is a cynical attack on consumers. The pain of this will be borne by consumers who have been denied the right to choose where to shop. Mr Speaker, my view is a simple one. Anyone who is in business and who wants customers coming through their doors and trading has to offer the customers something that they want. If they are not offering something that they want, they should not be running off to the Government and asking them to close everybody else so that they do not have any choice, which is what this is about. Mr Speaker, it is an unacceptable thing.

It is even more unacceptable, Mr Speaker, when you contemplate a couple of the other aspects of this. What we had here was an attempt by Coles Supermarkets, by their own declaration, to find a way to keep offering service to customers and also to keep employing their staff. You would have thought that the Minister for Employment, Mr De Domenico, after reading how the unemployment figures keep going up and up, and after reading the stories about how Mrs Carnell and Mr Howard keep declaring people redundant, albeit voluntarily, would be happy about a business in Canberra that was trying to find a way of keeping 106 people on their payroll, but apparently not.

Mr De Domenico: It has gone down from 300 to 106 now.

MR WHITECROSS: No, it has not gone down, Mr De Domenico. I am talking about Coles. Woolworths is a different story. Coles is talking about 106. Coles has thought of a way of keeping 106 people on the payroll. Mr De Domenico does not care. According to Mr De Domenico, let them eat cake. He is not interested in jobs in Canberra. He can put a few more people out of work. He has put so many out of work. Unemployment has gone up so much since Mrs Carnell came to government. Mr Howard is helping with his extra 5,000 or so. What is an extra hundred, according to Mr De Domenico. We need not worry about that. Of course, he has his head in the sand on that as well. As we recall, Mr Speaker, a spokesperson for the Deputy Chief Minister was reported when the first Bill went through as saying:

The Government does not believe the restricted trading hours at Town Centres will have a negative impact on employment.

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