Page 785 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 March 2016
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Certainly, the Greens differ from the Liberals in this area largely because I have not heard any actual, concrete proposals from the Liberals. We were assured today that we would hear a lot more, but I think it is instructive to reflect on the recent example provided by Mr Wall.
Members will recall that last year Tatts announced that it signed a deal to begin selling lottery products in several Woolworths petrol stations in the ACT. The newsagency industry became rightly concerned that a major corporation was moving to absorb further revenue streams from small business. I said at the time that the Coles-Woolies duopoly presented a very real problem for Australia and that it had a particularly detrimental impact on small business in Australia. Such a level of market concentration will never be good for the community, and we should be resistant to moves by market heavyweights that will price local businesses out of existence.
In response to the Tatts announcement, Mr Wall tabled his Lotteries Amendment Bill, which was intended to prevent the sale of lottery products in businesses over a certain size. The bill was tested in the Assembly and found wanting. At the time, Madam Deputy Speaker, as the minister, you outlined various reasons that the bill was unable to deliver what it intended to, and provided Mr Wall with a bit of a cheat sheet, really, on how to fix the bill through the detailed explanation that you gave to the Assembly.
The question is: what has happened to the legislation since then? I understood that Mr Wall would go away to work on his bill to ensure that it was more effective and did the job that he wanted it to do. However, months later we are yet to see the bill. We have had the entire summer break, we have come back, we have had two sitting weeks in February, we are now into a sitting week in March and there is still no sign of the legislation. This was despite the fact that I had indicated to Mr Wall my in-principle support for the legislation and my willingness to work on it, but that it was his job as the sponsor of the bill to draft the amendments to his legislation to make it workable.
What we see here is a classic case of the way the Liberal Party operates—that is, Mr Wall got the headline, but he could not be bothered to do the homework. That is right: he could not be bothered to do the homework, because we still do not see this legislation. Having stood up as the champion of small business—“I’m going to fix it for you”—months and months later, there is still no resolution to this matter. There is no sign of the bill and there is a big question mark about whether we will ever see it in this place.
When the Liberal Party stands up and says, “We’re going to do such and such for small business,” it is worth taking that with a grain of salt, because when the litmus test is put on, we actually see zero output, no performance and no outcome. That is really disappointing when it comes to supporting small business in this place.
After the collective sigh of relief at the removal of the former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, we are now finding that we are getting equal levels of disappointment when it comes to small business from the new Prime Minister. We have, of course, seen the extensive cutbacks to the public service, but the irrational cutbacks to science and
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