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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1356 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

changed their shopping habits to local centres as opposed to from, say, town centres to group centres. The effect on small centres may have been very small indeed. The evidence on this, of course, is not entirely conclusive. I am aware that the Canberra Small Business Council maintains that the effect on a number of local centres has been very positive. We asked for evidence of that, and that evidence was not available. So, Mr Speaker, we can only speculate about that. But the hard data does not support the contention that the legislation was effective in that respect. Mr Speaker, I have tabled that market research analysis summary.

I also mentioned that there were predictions made by those opposite which turned out not to be justified by the circumstances. Of course, there was a prediction about very heavy job losses in supermarkets in town centres. We cannot know for certain what job situation resulted in those supermarkets, without seeing details of payroll tax information. Payroll tax returns are confidential and, under the privacy legislation, cannot be revealed. However, subsequent to the legislation being enacted, I invited the supermarkets concerned to voluntarily lay out the information on their payroll tax position, and they uniformly declined to do so.

The anecdotal evidence to me, in fact, is that there were very few, if any, job losses in town centre supermarkets as a result of this restriction, despite a very intense campaign by the supermarkets saying that this would occur. I note that one supermarket has promised to hire another 26 people now that the legislation is being lifted, but I treat that with some scepticism as well. Again, we can clear this up by the organisations concerned actually disclosing information from their books and demonstrating one way or the other whether that was the case.

Mr Berry: Gary, blush a little; you should be blushing.

MR SPEAKER: And you should be quiet, Mr Berry.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, when it comes to blushing, I would certainly be blushing if I were the Leader of the Opposition. The press release that was issued on Monday of this week indicated that the Carnell Government was only suspending this legislation because it actually wanted to go back to the legislation. I have to say that the record will show that this is a very cheeky press release. The reality is, of course, that the legislation could have been repealed last Thursday night and was not because those opposite chose not to take up the offer by the Government to pass the legislation last Thursday night. I went upstairs on Thursday afternoon to get my notes to come down and take part in the debate, and I had a phone call from Mr Berry, who said, "We do not want to do it this afternoon; we have changed our mind. We would rather do it next week; thanks very much". That was fine.

Ms McRae: And who adjourned the sitting after Mrs Carnell's speech?

MR HUMPHRIES: You people agreed to it.

Ms McRae: Who permitted you to go straight to the press after the budget was presented? We adjourned it for you. A fat lot of good that did us. Next year you are sitting until 10 o'clock, after the budget has been presented.

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