Page 4406 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 14 October 2009
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Following the government’s announcement on 7 October 2009, there has already been significant interest expressed by potential new players in the Canberra retail supermarket sector. As the Chief Minister noted, the ACT is “open for business” and welcomes further investment from new and existing players in the ACT. That is why I am calling on the Assembly today to support this motion, to support the efforts of the ACT government to increase competition in the ACT supermarket sector. The ACT government, as I said, is committed to promoting diversity and choice in Canberra’s retail and wholesale supermarket sector and we believe that further competition is good for all Canberrans and will inevitably result in a wide range of benefits, including lower prices and increased choice for all Canberra consumers. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.34): I can see now why the government were so keen to gag debate on the previous motion. They are hoping the day will go short by just having nothing to say. We had one minute from the minister on the previous motion and then a gag. Now we have had just a few minutes from Ms Porter. They are interesting tactics that are being employed today.
There are a number of important issues to discuss in relation to supermarket competition policy. This is something that nationally has been an ongoing debate for many years and is an important debate. There is no doubt that the big players, Woolworths and Coles, do have a very large share of the supermarket turnover in this country and indeed in this city.
We in the Liberal Party believe very strongly in competition. We want to see more competition right across the board. We want to see competition in our supermarket sector. We want to see competition, for instance, in our building and development industry; something the government of course has stifled in an ongoing way in the way that it has used the LDA and in the way that it has handled land release. So this is a government that does not actually support competition across the board.
This is a fairly broadly worded motion from Ms Porter. It is effectively a motherhood statement, and I cannot imagine that anyone in this Assembly could vote against it. It “supports moves to increase competition”. Yes, tick; we support moves to increase competition. The question going forward will be how we go about that. We are due to receive a briefing, I believe very soon, on this issue from Mr Martin in relation to his report, and we look forward to looking in more detail at some of the provisions. As I said last week, there are a number of positive initiatives in the report that was handed down recently.
Opening up competition in our group centres is particularly important. There is no doubt, if you look around town, if you look around, say, on the south side of Canberra, that the best prices, the best value shoppers get in their supermarkets, tend to be where there is a number of supermarkets competing; there is simply no doubt about it. If you compare the prices at the Tuggeranong Hyperdome, for instance, where there is competition, with those in the group centres, where there is just one supermarket, the prices and the options for consumers are far better at the Hyperdome. That is something we want to see expanded. So the government should be encouraged to look at ways of opening up competition in our group centres.
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