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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3490 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

The report was out for five months before the industry got a chance to look at it. Minister, you can sit there and smirk as much as you like with your little paperboy smirk. It does not wash. This minister is trying to give the hire car industry a tiny time in which to make its representations. The industry has had the report for three weeks. Some of the issues are glaringly obvious, but there are other bits and pieces. If this sort of sneakiness is any indication, then there is going to be something else in that report.

The industry has a right to fair and equal treatment. It would be the fair thing to give the industry five months to think about it and to give the committee five months to think about it and report to the Assembly on it. What the minister proposes is just not the fair thing. If the minister wants to spring something on us across the chamber because he wants to play silly little politics, so be it, but do not spring this sort of stuff on the hire car industry.

You are the steward of these people's livelihoods, and you are rushing the inquiry through. If you do not take notice of what people in the industry say, the death of their industry or the death of particular companies will be on your head. I am trying to give you a lifeline here by saying, "Let us do the right thing." Then you can go for it. This is just not on.

MR RUGENDYKE (11.35): I do not quite know what the motive for pinning us down to 1 February 2001 might be, but it is totally outrageous. There is something shonky going on here. I do not quite know why that is either. There are glaring deficiencies in the Freehills report. Various sectors of the industry have been totally left out of consideration. Decisions made by the department have got most of the players in the industry offside. There are glaring problems in the industry that I can see, and I am yet to fathom what the problems are, let alone how to deal with them in a fair and equitable manner. To try to rush this through in this fashion is totally outrageous.

Amendment negatived.

MR HARGREAVES (11.36), in reply: In the minister's short speech he referred to the imperative of the national competition policy. The national competition policy, as he quite rightly said, talks about legislation which prevents fair competition in the marketplace. You could argue that the taxi industry falls under that particular definition-after all, it is one cooperative-and therefore we ought to examine the legislation applying to the taxi industry to see whether there is any public benefit in leaving it as it is. I do not have any objection to that. I had not made significant comment on that, because I understood that it rightly should have been examined under the NCP.

But I have an argument about the hire car industry. We are talking about 22 separate businesses here. There is not a monopoly. They do not have one central place that you ring up to get yourself a hire car. You have to ring all 22 of them if you want to get the most competitive rates. This industry is not a monopoly. An examination of the legislation under the guise of having a look at a monopoly just does not hold a cupful of cold water. It ought not to have taken place. If the government has some imperative about wanting to look at the industry for other reasons, let us hear those reasons and debate, them. To hide behind the NCP does not work.

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