Page 4285 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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because it was felt that it was too long and there were some matters that were better dealt with separately.
We had the substantive motion yesterday, which unfortunately was defeated, and the request for a committee today. I am very pleased that the committee will be established. I have had negotiations with the Liberal and Labor parties over the last couple of weeks and it has taken a while to achieve agreement but I am very pleased that this important issue will be looked at by the Assembly.
In my speech yesterday I made a statement that we have not seen any impacts of the supermarket competition policy. I actually was quite specifically talking about John Martin’s review, although, having looked through it, I suspect my statement may well have been true regardless of whether I was talking about John Martin or not.
We have seen where the government is thinking about it but in terms of impacts on the ground we have not seen anything yet. The government has said that it is going to release a package of land to provide five new stores at Kingston, Dickson, Casey and Amaroo. But to the best of my knowledge, while that decision has been announced it has not yet actually come to fruition insofar as nobody has yet actually got these new parcels of land.
It may well be, as Mr Seselja said yesterday, that the decision in Giralang was influenced by John Martin’s work. But even that, with the Supreme Court action, has yet to come into action. I would also point out that to the best of my knowledge, the last three DAs in Giralang have been remarkably similar; so presumably the influence has not been great.
I think that one of the very important issues that we need to deal with, and one of the reasons this inquiry is so important, is that it is essential that we have a degree of certainty for businesses and residents as to what the supermarket and shopping centre policy is. Businesses deserve certainty because they potentially invest millions of dollars on the basis of what they believe the government policy is. There may well be reason for government policy to change.
The Greens are not saying that government policy should be stuck in one place forever. What the Greens are saying is that if government policy changes, it should change in a clear and transparent fashion, not on the basis of a decision on one DA. That is not a clear and transparent way to change policy for supermarket competition or for the retail hierarchy.
It is also important for the residents of Canberra. You may well make a decision when you decide to live somewhere that you want to live there because it has got shopping centres or you do not want to live there because it is next to a very busy shopping centre. As a plus or a minus, it is still a relevant decision and people should have information to make this decision.
I would also like to say very strongly, given Mr Seselja yesterday stating that the Greens were not supporting small and local businesses, that one of the major reasons we have been pursuing the issue of supermarket competition and wanting to see fair
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