Page 4876 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 11 November 2009
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The motion also calls on the government to do a few simple things. We have not heard yet whether the government or the Greens will be supporting this but given the Chief Minister’s public statements it would appear that he is unlikely to and he will need to say which of these things he does not support: ensuring that independent supermarket operators are not excluded from bidding for new supermarket sites in the ACT, ensuring that a competitive and transparent process is used to allocate new supermarket sites to supermarket operators in the ACT, reporting to the Legislative Assembly on the process used to allocate each new supermarket site in the ACT to supermarket operators, and seeking the ACCC’s views on the recommendations contained in the Review of ACT supermarket competition policy and report to the Assembly before the recommendations are implemented.
It will be interesting to see which of those this government does not support. I will go through each of them but I will first go through some of the concerns and the stakeholder views that have been raised. We have seen NARGA CEO, Ken Henrick, say he is worried about the restrictions on new entrants to the ACT market. He says:
Anybody bidding for a site will need to be a full-line retailer and competitor to the major supermarket chains, demonstrated ability and infrastructure to run several full-line supermarkets.
That would effectively rule out every family-owned business in Australia.
He says it will encourage foreign companies to expand. He goes on:
What it would do would probably, certainly, allow Supabarn to open additional sites and that’s a good thing.
But it would also facilitate the entry of foreign competitors while keeping out Australian family-owned businesses.
What is it that the government has against family owned businesses here in the ACT? What is it that this government has against locally owned IGAs which may want to expand their businesses and bid for some of these sites?
These are our concerns and these are concerns highlighted and shared by the CEO of NARGA, Ken Henrick, in quite eloquent terms. IGA owner Marinos Haridemos has contacted our office by fax and he states:
I am concerned that the eligibility criteria being developed for land tenders will be used to exclude me from the process. I want to be able to tender for new land releases. I will bring competitive tension to the ACT supermarket sector.
This is at the heart of it. This is the question that we need resolved. This is the concern that is there in the community. I am sure that other members of the Assembly will have been contacted by concerned IGA owners, and we have met with several of these concerned business owners here in the ACT. They own small to medium businesses. Many of them have run these businesses for many years and they are concerned at the restrictions that have been placed on them. They are concerned about the recommendations and what they will mean.
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