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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 341 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

These are all issues that have a very strong bearing on competition policy. It would be very easy, on the day after this legislation is enacted, for a person - particularly someone who has been aggrieved by a member of one of these professions - to say to the commission, "I have legitimate grounds for complaint about the way in which the profession operated. I want you to conduct an inquiry into these matters".

The commission may well agree that there are legitimate grounds for complaint and that there is a public interest in investigating such a matter. But it may not be able to manage an inquiry into that matter at the time the first person comes to the door demanding an inquiry into that matter. There may not be the capacity to do that, because there are issues to do with the professions, issues to do with all sorts of monopoly providers in the ACT, issues to do with the taxi industry or other issues. We would be able to list a dozen or more issues in the competition field right now which would be potentially on the work plate of the ICRC.

If we expect every one of those to be picked up at the same time, where is the commission going to do that and how is it going to manage its workload if it is handling all these inquiries at the one time? The point of the provision in clause 19B is that when someone comes to the door you can say to them, "We agree you have legitimate grounds for complaint, and we agree that there is a public interest in investigating this matter, but not just yet. We have other things we have to do first" or "There are other processes under way to examine the competitive issues relating to this particular matter".

Do not forget that the Government itself has a large program of reviewing legislation for its anti-competitive effects on the ACT community, and there are other mechanisms, some initiated by the National Competition Council, which would have a bearing on these sorts of issues. It would be legitimate for the commission to say, "We do not want to investigate this matter just at the moment".

With paragraph 19B(2)(c) in place it could, however, say to a person coming through the door, particularly a corporation, complaining about the anti-competitive conduct of somebody else in the marketplace, "Yes, we can conduct an inquiry into this matter now if you are prepared to pay for it to happen. If you want to pay for the inquiry now, which is not within our budget, which is not within our work timetable, we can appoint an associate commissioner to do that and we can get on and we can do it". But without paragraph 19B(2)(c) they cannot do that. That is principally what that provision is about.

If a matter is in the public interest, if the grounds for complaint are legitimate, I am sure the commission will conduct an inquiry. I have no doubt about that at all. Its job is to do these sorts of inquiries. But it will have to do it at a time and at a pace which allow it to get through the very large load which will come onto its plate from day one of its operation as the new competition overviewing body. Of course, it will also inherit from IPARC the role of regulating prices and oversighting prices, which is also an ongoing task which will be quite expensive for the commission to continue to do.

The Government is not opposed to these matters being investigated. In fact, the reason for having the legislation is to allow them to be investigated. But we also have to give the commission the power to regulate its workload. For that reason the amendments Ms Tucker has moved have not been thought through. If she had come to us and

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