House debates

Wednesday, 18 October 2006

Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005

Consideration of Senate Message

1:14 pm

Photo of Bob KatterBob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We will be gone from this place in 10 or 20 years time. There will not be one of us left. But people write history books—and I spent a lot of time writing a history book when I was sick—and it is very interesting to see that there are people that go down as heroes and there are people that go down as blackguards. As for the people who are leading the government, there is no doubt in my mind after this fortnight where their place in the history books is going to lie. The way history looks at it is to ask: ‘Who was on the side of the people of Australia here? Who delivered real competition in the marketplace here? Or who changed all the rules so that the big boys could control everything?’ We have seen a concentration of market power unprecedented in Australian history. I am in the middle of writing a history book, so I know a fair bit about it.

I am one of the few people—in fact, I think I am the only person—in this parliament who actually participated in the marketplace in floating companies during the mining boom. I was very young at the time, and the mining crash came and cut a lot of us off at the pass, but I am very familiar with this. You move swiftly with a king hit before anybody knows what has happened, and if anyone slows you down then your ability to take over the company is very seriously impaired. It all depends on the swiftness of the king hit. And, of course, the most powerful person will always win in the marketplace. I have said on many occasions in this place that the deficiency on the other side of the House is that when they were little boys or little girls they never played Monopoly. If you have played Monopoly, you know that the whole idea is to get as much market power in your hand as possible and, if you do, you can wipe the other people off the board completely and win the game.

The opposition is quite right. I seldom agree with them, but in this area I must praise them. We are talking about two entirely different functions here: an investigative watchdog role and a judicial role. We are removing the investigative and watchdog role completely. If you want to protect your home with a good watchdog that barks loudly at night, then the first thing the burglar must do is poison the watchdog. Today we are poisoning the watchdog, and the burglars are all waiting to get into our house.

The government are great advocates of competition policy, but the great architects do not lie on that side of the House: the great architect of competition policy was Paul Keating. So they are the acolytes, not of Mr Menzies, who said that we must preserve competition and that a government must be proactive to keep in place competition; they are the acolytes of Mr Keating, who said that if we remove regulation and allow the free interplay of market forces we will all be looked after. Mr Keating is another one that obviously did not play Monopoly when he was a little boy.

As for the media laws, everyone has read the newspapers today and knows what is going to happen there. One of the leading contenders in Australia said, ‘If you liberalise the media laws as the government wants to, then 72 per cent of everything you watch and read will be owned by two people.’ I am not at liberty to divulge that person’s name, but I think eyebrows would be raised here if I did. Would anyone believe that there is a free flow of market forces in the media in Australia? Would anyone believe it?

I think I have travelled outside of Qantas, on other airlines, four times. You travel on Qantas or you do not travel—at least where I come from that is the case. In food, Coles and Woolworths have gone from 50.5 per cent of the market in 1991 to 82 per cent now. That is something to be proud of having presided over, and Mr Keating can claim a lot of credit for this as well—I do not want the government to claim all the credit here. They moved from 50.5 per cent of the market to 82 per cent of the market. We are advised by people from the Motor Trades Association that Woolworths and Coles already have 62 per cent of the fuel market in Australia—very grim days for ethanol indeed—and on present trends they will be moving up to 75 per cent. They think they will plateau out at 75 per cent. I strongly endorse the opposition with their divestiture amendment to the Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005.

There are only four people with their faces up on Mount Rushmore in the United States, and two of them are founding fathers of the republic. One of them is Teddy Roosevelt(Time expired)

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