Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Hansard source

I have this terrible feeling that the Treasurer is going to do what I rightly attempted to do with his own amendments, and that is to challenge them on scope. I hope he does not do that. I hope the Treasurer does not deny this place a proper debate about section 46 of the Trade Practices Act simply because he is embarrassed about the fact that he has held a gun to the head of the collective small business community so that he can get exactly what he wants on Dawson. So I need to make a very short contribution now in case he has the audacity to take that act and again deny a proper debate about these issues in this place.

Let’s be clear about this. There is one difference between the government and the opposition here: the opposition wants to embrace everything that is in Dawson without qualification other than the authorisation procedures within the ACCC. Guess what: that is a positive small business measure. We are saying, ‘Let’s have collective bargaining and all the things in this bill which are good for small business and let’s strengthen it for small business by making sure the ACCC is the gatekeeper.’ That is a positive, win-win situation for the ACCC. What the Treasurer is proposing is to embrace all those things that are good for small business—and at the front of them, of course, sits collective bargaining—but there is a trade-off. What the Treasurer says to the small business community is, ‘I’ll give you some section 46 changes only if you support what I’m trying to do on mergers.’ In other words, small business gets what it wants, but only if the big end of town gets exactly—not close to: exactly—what it wants. That is the difference between the government and the opposition. We want to give a win-win situation to the small business sector; the Treasurer wants to give them half a win. They take a positive, but they have to cop the negative.

Let’s make no mistake about it: if merger laws become too liberal in this country, there are two losers—small business and consumers. Well, there are three losers really—small business, consumers and the Australian economy, including every person in this country who relies upon a healthy and strong Australian economy. So let us be clear about the differences.

Now, let me just quickly go through why divestiture in section 46 is necessary and why these other changes are necessary. Cases like Boral, Rural Press and Metway have severely undermined the effectiveness of section 46. It is quite clear that the legislature has not had its intentions secured as a result of those court cases.

So we need to strengthen the act. We need to renew that section of the act. We need to put a threshold in so that the courts can be clear about what constitutes market power when considering whether a company has abused that market power. We need a clear and concise idea for the courts and the ACCC of what constitutes taking advantage of market power.

These are the things the courts have decided they cannot deliver for the ACCC. The way the law now stands it would be hard to show that Telstra, no less, has the degree of market power necessary for the ACCC to successfully secure a prosecution in the courts in this country. And these things need to be changed. The Treasurer acknowledges they need to be changed but he says to the small business community, ‘Only if you help me out first on mergers.’ They do not need to come in that order.

If the Treasurer was serious he would have dealt with these things concurrently. He would have had a bill containing all the good things in Dawson and fixed section 46 at the same time, but he could not do that because he wants to hold small business to ransom.

Now he has these amendments to the Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005 hoping to buy off Senator Joyce and Senator Fielding. Well, I wish him luck, because from what I have read in the papers neither of them seem convinced that it is going to make much difference. Treasurer, you should have done the right thing by small business instead of holding a gun at their collective head.

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