Page 4107 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
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I do so because of the issues that I raised in the in-principle debate, that the Chief Minister has come in after question time with amendments to this bill which impact on business. The Greens said that they consulted business and that some supermarkets agreed with their proposal.
What is being proposed by the Chief Minister goes much further than is currently the case, and it may be that, because it deals with free-range eggs and things like that, it will catch up people who sell eggs at markets and will catch up people in delis and things like that. I think it is reasonable, because the Chief Minister has brought this in at such a late hour, that we should basically take a deep breath and see what the impact will be on business before we go down this path.
I challenge members of the Assembly to keep in mind that everyone—from Woollies down to the mum and dad owner of the deli—will be impacted by these amendments that the Chief Minister has brought in. I do not know what those real impacts will be, and I think it is reasonable, if we are going to make laws that will have an impact on business in the ACT, that we should take a deep breath and actually ask business what they think.
In consultation with the Clerk, it seems that the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety is the appropriate committee because under the administrative orders the egg labelling and sale legislation comes under the minister for fair trading, the Attorney-General, and this seems to be the appropriate place. I welcome the support of the Assembly for this reference.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (5.38): The Greens will not be agreeing to Mrs Dunne’s motion. As we have said, we actually have done quite a bit of consultation on this. There was an exposure draft out for six months. We spoke to a number of local supermarkets. Woolworths, which is the biggest supermarket in Australia, has, of its own volition, said that it will introduce a system which has the major elements of what is being proposed by the Greens’ original bill or the amendments, which will almost certainly be carried, that the government is introducing.
But the essential element of all of this is the segregation of different types of eggs being produced by different types of systems. This is not going to be a problem for the people in the markets. They are all selling free-range eggs. The ones at the Farmers Market, the ones at the EPIC market, the ones at the Belconnen market et cetera are basically selling all cage eggs. They only have one type of egg anyway. Part of the government’s amendments says, I believe, that if you have less than two metres of eggs to sell, which is quite a lot of eggs to sell, then you do not have to do it; so the small delis will not be covered by this.
My contention is that there already has been considerable consultation and there has been considerable public support and, probably more importantly from this point of view, considerable industry support. Woollies, IGA, Supabarn, have all told us they have no problems with it. Everyone has said that as long as it is a level playing field, as long as everyone has to do the same thing, they do not mind.
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