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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 111 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, these clauses actually emasculate the Milk Authority and I think that we should oppose them, so the Opposition will be opposing those clauses.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (11.32): Mr Speaker, the Government will oppose these amendments. In Mr Hargreaves' words, they are just cosmetic changes. This is part of their apology. We will oppose them.

Clauses agreed to.

Clause 8

MR HARGREAVES (11.33): I move:

Page 3, line 12, omit the clause, substitute the following clause:

"7. Fixing of prices

Section 16A of the Principal Act is amended by omitting subsection (4) and substituting the following subsection:

`(4) Subsection (3) ceases to have effect at the expiration of 30 June 2000'.".

Mr Speaker, we cannot possibly agree to having the price fixed by the Treasurer when we disagree with the dismantling of the Milk Authority. What we seek to do is to amend section 16A of the principal Act by omitting subsection (4) and substituting the following subsection (4):

Subsection 3 ceases to have effect at the expiration of 30 June 2000.

Our amendment is, essentially, about the exemptions in the TPA which protect zoning for vendors. What we are seeking to do is replace the year 1999 with the year 2000. Whilst we disagree with the whole thing in principle, we accept the fact that this is a piece of insurance for those people out there in the industry. Whilst I appreciate the Minister's advice earlier that all hell is going to break loose in New South Wales in March, I might suggest that all hell has already broken loose in New South Wales if the prices to the consumer have gone up everywhere and gone down for everybody else except the big supermarkets with their $60m worth of profit.

Mr Speaker, what we do have, of course, is uncertainty in the industry. Everybody is scared witless. We would merely seek, if our amendments go down, to extend the insurance for the vendors so that they can have their zones restructured within a timeframe which ensures that the existing arrangements continue. The Government has indicated that that is what it is trying to do by putting December 1999. Dr Sheen actually recommended June 2000 in her report. Mr Speaker, we will be moving amendments so that whenever we see 1999 we should change it to June 2000 and we seek the crossbenchers' support for that.

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