Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3208 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

we have not defined "supermarket". So the logical thing to do is to go to a dictionary and see what people normally mean by a supermarket. A supermarket is a thing that is down the road where you do your shopping and so on. But we have a new, very interesting situation now, Mr Speaker, that we have a proposal in Canberra for a supermarket club.

Is a supermarket club covered by this legislation? I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that it is not. This definition as to what times the public can go in or out or any supermarket can open is fine, but that does not stop a supermarket club from opening - a club in which the members are involved, in which the members have some advantage, and to which the members have to pay a membership fee. This is not what is meant by a supermarket. Mr Humphries, if you said to your wife, "Are you a member of the supermarket?", she would say, "What are you talking about?". If you said, "Have you paid for membership of the supermarket?", she would say, "No; you do not have to pay for membership of a supermarket". Of course you do not. To have to be a member of a supermarket is an absolutely ludicrous notion. That is not a normal definition, Mr Speaker, or Mr Humphries, or Ms Horodny, of what a supermarket is.

We know that Coles is particularly litigious, and my guess is that they will be getting this to court to test whether or not a supermarket is different from a supermarket club. It may be called the corner club.

Ms Follett: Call it a coffee club.

MR MOORE: Indeed. I think the "evening corner club" of Coles would be an appropriate thing. This is a club that offers tea, offers coffee and offers a 5 per cent discount on goods. The interesting part about this supermarket club is that it shares the location of a supermarket. In the daytime it is a supermarket but in the evening it changes its form to a supermarket club.

It is quite clear to me, Mr Speaker, that there is yet another loophole that can be explored, and no doubt Mr Humphries will come rushing back into the Assembly on 23 September, crying, "Ah; the courts have said that they have a supermarket club. It is different from a supermarket. We have to put into the legislation a definition to say what a supermarket is, because we do not have one, and this is clearly different. We are going to have to make sure that Coles behave and act according to what we intended by the law, not the law that we wrote". The law was incompetently written. It is more embarrassing for Mr Humphries because he had to take over from his colleague Mr De Domenico. His habit is to point his finger at parliamentary counsel. He will not point his finger at Mr De Domenico, who introduced the legislation. It is even more embarrassing for Mr Humphries, who is a lawyer, and so it should be.

But that is not enough. He then has to rush this through. He has to rush it through, Mr Speaker, and in so doing he also introduces a brand-new precedent for commencement clauses because he wants to make sure this commences at the same time as the rest of the legislation he has gazetted. He has to be very careful, so he puts in this brand-new commencement clause. What a great precedent! It is the end of my using

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .