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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 334 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

claims. The Government will need to make every effort to highlight the fact that the commission is there for the entire community and not just for those who can afford to pay.

Based on the assurances I have received, the Opposition intends to support the Bill, pending Ms Tucker's amendments. We will look at how the commission operates in the next few months and reserve the right to make amendments at that point, particularly in relation to the waiving of fees. We had intended to move amendments to the Bill to allow for the waiving of fees where people could not afford them, to ensure that the cost did not become an inhibition to the pursuit of justice, but we note that there other provisions in the Bill. The commissioner can decide whether a matter must go forward or should be investigated and can seek funds elsewhere. We will be monitoring the Bill in practice and give notice that we reserve the right to come back and change this Bill if it appears that there is any inhibition to legitimate claims going forward simply because of the funding process.

MS TUCKER (11.25): This Bill is the culmination of a long debate which I have been involved in about the adequacy of monitoring the implementation of national competition policy in the ACT. Unfortunately, the history of this debate shows that the Government has not adequately taken into account community concerns about the impacts of competition policy and the need for the community to have direct input into decisions to introduce more competition into what were once government services or were regulated industries.

Members may recall that state and territory Ministers agreed to implement the national competition policy in 1995. On my motion, the Bill to enact competition policy in the ACT was referred to a select committee. One of the recommendations of that committee was that the Government establish a forum to provide ongoing monitoring and advice on the implementation of competition policy. Such a forum was to include representatives of community, environmental, consumer, union, business and academic organisations.

The Government did not support this recommendation, so I put up a motion in 1996 to establish a competition policy forum. The Government opposed that motion but the support of the ALP and Mr Moore allowed the motion to pass. The Government went through the actions of setting up the Competition Policy Forum, but had no commitment to its operations. Members of the forum felt that government officials marginalised the forum's function. This came to a head when proposals were put forward by the Government in 1998 to reform the ACT milk industry. It became clear that the Competition Policy Forum was being given no role in the debate over these proposals.

Around this time I began developing a private members Bill to establish a statutory competition policy forum, but in June 1998 this work was overtaken by a motion from Mr Osborne in the Assembly calling on the Government to establish such an independent council and requesting the Chief Minister to develop a model for such a council.

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