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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 112 ..

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (11.36): Mr Speaker, the Government will be opposing this amendment. Mr Hargreaves either does not understand or deliberately misrepresents the position. I hope it is that he does not understand. The fixing of the price of milk will go to IPARC. It is not the Treasurer that will do that.

Amendment negatived.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 9

MR HARGREAVES (11.37): The Opposition will be opposing this clause. Basically, this clause is the central piece of the whole Bill. The one word that this Government is actually committed to is "repeal". Basically, it just wants to do away with the Milk Authority. It wants to do away with protections and it wants to do away with any confidence in the industry. Mr Speaker, in my view it has been particularly successful in doing so. People have come to my office wondering what on earth is going on. If this Government had not started this thing in the first place, it would not have occurred.

Nobody would argue that a government has the right to change its administrative arrangements around to suit itself. In fact, the Department of Health and Community Care, under the obviously incompetent charge of Mr Moore, has suffered an enormous number of changes - from statutory authority to departmental status, to sectional status and many things in between. All of these sorts of changes could have occurred without actually doing what they are doing at the moment, without the havoc that they are wreaking in the industry.

From the discussions I have had with members of the crossbench it is apparent that there is so much confusion out there that the people themselves do not know. I am getting representations saying, "This is the worst thing that has ever happened". Mr Rugendyke, I know, has received representations saying that it is not. Half the time you would not know. It has not been explained properly to the people in the industry. It has not been explained properly to me. It certainly has not been explained to my satisfaction. I do not see the necessity to go through all of this procedure. A lot of the changes that the Government needed to make should have been done a lot more simply and a lot more leisurely; and they could have been a lot more easily explained. Mr Speaker, I urge the Assembly to reject this clause.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (11.39): Mr Hargreaves says that the Government did not have to do what it has done and that it has confused people. First and foremost, Mr Speaker, I would like to remind all present that a copy of the incoming brief for the Labor Minister of the day in 1989 revealed that even then there were concerns. Mr Hargreaves is right: This Government should not have to be doing this. The previous Labor government should have done it a decade ago. As to his exemptions, the effect of what will occur in New South Wales after the New South Wales election has some impact on that. We believe that we need to see what happens in New South Wales and Victoria. The exemption as it stands is fine because it will have to be revisited later in the year.

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