Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens also support the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Small Business and Unfair Contract Terms) Bill 2015. We not only had a policy in 2012-13 going to the election to introduce similar legislation; we actually had legislation drafted back in 2013 to do similar. We have long been a supporter of small business in this country, and giving them as level a playing field as possible in terms of broader competition policy and tax breaks, instant asset write-offs and small business commissioners. Recently we have stood in this chamber and debated the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bill 2015, which was brought forward by the government, which the Greens also supported and we also had similar legislation drawn up while we were in government with Labor in 2013. So we will be supporting this bill.

We will be moving some amendments, which I can go into more detail on when we government in committee. We also agree with the Labor Party that it would be useful to have a review mechanism put in place now so that these bills can potentially be finetuned and the concerns that have been raised—and a number of them are valid concerns—can be quantitatively and qualitatively assessed over the first couple of years of operation of these laws. We would like to see the thresholds extended to include a larger number of small businesses. On our calculations, around 80 per cent of small businesses will be covered by the $100,000 up-front price payable. In recent weeks we have been meeting with stakeholders who would like to see that extended. So one of the amendments we will be moving will be to increase that to $300,000. On our calculations, that would capture about 95 per cent of small businesses under the definition in this bill. When we go in committee, I will raise some issues with the minister about why that definition was used.

We do not believe that that increase would be any problem in terms of any complications with the legislation that is before us, but it would capture a larger number of small businesses in their contract negotiations—if you could even call them negotiations. It has been made very clear in the explanatory memorandum that a number of small businesses in these situations—whether it is lease payments or negotiating the provision of goods and services or the purchase of goods and services—do not classify these things as negotiations. They get 'take it or leave it' contracts. Some of them know that these contracts are unfair but they do not have the resources to appeal them, and if they do not take what they are given they are very easily put out of business. The Australian Newsagents Federation, ANF, made a submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee in which they talked about how difficult it is for some of their members when there are only one or two suppliers of the goods and services that they need to conduct their businesses, how the contract terms can unfairly disadvantage them and also about the limited rights of repeal they have in relation to these contract terms.

We believe in small business because small businesses are people. Small businesses are your mums and dads, your cousins and the person down the street. Nearly five million people are employed by small business across this country; nearly two million small businesses are registered. Most of them are operated by one or two people. They are often stalwarts of our local communities, and they are often disadvantaged when compared with big business in terms of their resources and the conditions they operate under. We believe in giving them a fairer go by doing things such as lowering their tax, and the Greens wanted to have tax lowered to 28 per cent. We have seen something similar to that from the government. We want to give them advantages in terms of instant asset write-offs, and we want to strengthen competition powers.

It would be wrong if I were not to mention that at this time we are very disappointed with the federal government, which seems to be dillydallying on an effects test in this country. An effects test is critically important for competition policy. It has long been the Holy Grail for a number of small business groups and for farmers in this country—the ability to at least have a provision that provides a better level playing field. I would not say it is a silver bullet in terms of making the playing field more competitive in this country, but it is better than what we currently have.

I know Minister Billson has been out there advocating for an effects test. It was recommended under the government's own Harper review, albeit a watered-down version of an effects test. We would like to have seen a stronger version of that, like the initial publication in the consultation paper, but it is better than what we have now. At least it will allow in future the potential for these things to be challenged by small business groups if they feel that they are being unfairly disadvantaged or shut out of the market by big business such as the duopoly. Certainly farmers' groups have also been calling for a change to competition policy in this country. While we support what is coming before us today, and it is something that my party has long advocated for, we still urge the government—while they have this opportunity and the Greens in the Senate who will support an effects test provided that the legislation is sound and delivers in line with what we have been discussing—to bring the legislation to the Senate soon so that we can get this passed into law before the next election. We support an effects test, like we support business-to-business contract terms similar to what we have seen in place for consumer-to-business contracts.

On that point, I asked Choice, who I happened to meet with very recently, how things had gone with the consumer-to-business laws that were put in place over the Competition and Consumer Act. They said that these things had gone very well and that the ACCC has been quite successful and robust in its prosecutions of unfair contract terms under the Consumer Law. They felt that the system has worked fairly well. There are some complications. We are comparing apples with oranges here in terms of small business to big business contracts versus consumer-to-business contracts, and we will need to go into some of that detail in committee. It is something, I agree with the Labor Party, that should be reviewed without taking away from the certainty of giving small business better competition policies and better tools to tackle unfair contract terms.

The Bills Digest spells a lot of this out in detail for us, but I would say—and I noticed that Senator Carr did not go so far as to mention this—that we probably should have had at least a day in committee for an inquiry on this. This did not go to an inquiry. While there is a lot of information that has been well set out here by the economics committee, we really probably should have had an inquiry into this.