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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1757 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

which includes takeaway containers, place the items in a recycling bin or recycle them in another way. That is the nub of the legislation that we have before us, which Ms Tucker seemed quite happy to put off until later rather than debate now.

A series of issues come up in this. First of all, it appears that no cost benefit analysis has been carried out for the scheme; it was certainly not part of Ms Tucker's introductory speech. Also, this is an area where it would be entirely appropriate for a business impact assessment to be carried out, and my understanding is that there has been no business impact assessment. We can see very early on that this would have a significant impact on business.

I would question whether consultation has been carried out at all on this piece of legislation, particularly consultation with those most affected-that is, the takeaway food shops and coffee shops, and so forth, around town. I would be very interested to have Ms Tucker indicate to us the level of consultation that has occurred on this particular legislation. It has been on the table for some time, so there is a possibility that those people would have been aware of it and able to look at it.

There are other issues that create major problems for this piece of legislation. First of all, the national competition policy agreement prohibits legislation that unnecessarily restricts competition. That legislation was signed off by Ms Follett when she was Chief Minister of the Labor government. This bill will restrict competition by placing a requirement on ACT businesses that does not apply to other businesses in Australia. So this is a raging set-up that puts a specific restriction on those businesses. There is a series of further problems with the bill, which is unfortunate because we can all understand Ms Tucker's intention. Whilst we would agree with the intention, its delivery is entirely inadequate, and this bill should be rejected because of that.

The national food safety standards, which were agreed by all Australian states and territories in July 2000, are very worth while. We have done a huge amount of work to try and get agreement on that and, unfortunately, this bill is inconsistent with it. It is also inconsistent with the intergovernmental agreement on food regulation reform, signed by COAG in November 2000, which commits the ACT and other jurisdictions to adopting national uniform food and food business regulation in Australia. Under our interstate agreements act, it has been circulated to other members that that agreement had been prepared.

The bill proposed by Ms Tucker is also inconsistent with the model food bill that the ACT agreed to adopt as part of COAG's intergovernmental agreement. There are a series of major problems with the legislation put forward by Ms Tucker, even though we recognise the intent behind it.

In accordance with the intergovernmental agreement, the ACT government is currently drafting a bill which is consistent with the national model food bill. The government's bill has as its primary goal, as does the current Food Act 1992, the provision of "safe and suitable" food to the ACT community. The bill put forward by Ms Tucker may impact negatively on food safety, in direct conflict with the goal of both the existing and proposed ACT food legislation. Our foremost concern should be food safety.

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