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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 11 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 3494 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

however, that they were given the answers and told to go away and work the questions out. We believe that that review was ill informed and fails to address the industry in its entirety. It also puts fright into many people in the industry. We accept that by rejecting this Bill we are not going to be helping much in the way of settling people down. However, we believe that there are opportunities the Government could grasp to do that. Canberrans voted with their feet last year in support of Canberra Milk. This was a very violent reaction and it should be an indication to the Government that they should listen to the community. The community is saying, "The milk industry ain't broke, so don't fix it".

I cannot come to grips with the type of agenda that the Government may have. I do not understand why they need to do this. It totally escapes me. When we look into it a little bit further, we do not see any indication of what the Government's plans are for milk vendors in the way of guarantees that may enable them to trade themselves out of the current situation and into the new one. We do not see what plans the Government has for the distributors. Distributors' livelihood is linked very seriously to the existence of Capitol Chilled Foods, and there is not any guarantee that Capitol Chilled Foods, even if they get the Canberra Milk brand, will be able to continue ad infinitum, because they need a certain amount of market share to be viable. If their market share drops below a certain figure, we do not believe there is a guarantee that Capitol Chilled Foods will stay in the Canberra market. Their processing and distribution business may move out of town. We just do not know. There is nothing in this legislation which addresses my disquiet about that.

The whole thing is a real shemozzle. We know that deregulation of the milk market interstate has brought price rises. There is absolutely no benefit to ACT consumers. Had the public benefit test been conducted and the conclusions published, a lot of our concerns may very well have been addressed. But that has not happened. The Labor Party do not think that the big heavy hand of the ACCC has much relevance. There is, if you like, the escape clause of the public benefit test, but that test has not been conducted. If it had been, things may have been a bit different.

I am concerned that the jobs of 600 to 700 runners are at risk. The milk vendors are frightened. They want some sort of a surety about their business. They do not want a surety that they are all going to get it in the neck. The 600 or 700 kids who are runners are part of a culture. They can be in Year 11 or Year 12 and have a part-time job as a runner. We want to make sure that this opportunity for kids to graduate into the work force using this as work experience continues.

I have a lot of sympathy for milk vendors. We would like to see the Government consider a scheme to allow vendors to restructure their marketplace. The scheme operating in Queensland is a model I think we could well choose to take up. This model requires vendors to contribute to a fund set up for the purpose, and it requires a small levy on the price of a litre of milk, not unlike the petrol levy in New South Wales of three by three. This scheme would allow the zones for existing vendors to cease at a given time and for people to be bought out if they want to exit the market. The zones would be redefined and tendered for again. Of course, compensation would be involved. It would come out of the fund.

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