Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the disallowance motion moved by the member for Kennedy and seconded by the member for Calare. I am delighted to see the Attorney-General in the House, because I think this is a very poor piece of law. No doubt he is here to listen to the arguments about this poorly structured regulation and the breach of a promise that was given in 2004 as an election commitment. The member for Lyons read out the first line of the former Deputy Prime Minister’s press release, where it quite categorically made a commitment to a mandatory code of conduct. That has not been delivered through these regulations. As I was saying, I am glad to see the Attorney-General is here to listen to this attempt to disallow a very poor regulation which is a breach of an electoral commitment made in 2004.

I support the member for Kennedy and the hard work that he has put into the struggle against the major supermarkets. I acknowledge the commitment that he has given to the smaller people in relation to their marketing power against the corporate giants. I am disappointed in the Labor Party’s view. If a commitment is given at election and the Labor Party disagree with that commitment—and if it is poor law and does not deliver to working families and small businesses the arrangements that were promised—I do not think that to line up beside that arrangement because it is supposedly somewhat of a movement forward is a good enough reason not to oppose this very poor regulation.

It does not surprise me that the National Party have backed away from an election commitment. It is becoming part of their representational processes. We have just been through the New South Wales election, for instance, where billions of dollars were promised. Knowing full well that they could not win the election, the National Party went on this massive spending spree. I think it was about five to one against the current Labor government. Billions of dollars were committed to try to buy seats. I think that people are becoming very much aware of the use of money and promises at election time—such as this one that a mandatory code would be put in place to give a fairer deal to horticulturalists and vegetable growers et cetera. Those sorts of commitments are not listened to anymore in the electorate.

There have been more recent examples of this sort of behaviour, this sort of flexible commitment, that the National Party have adopted. Last year in Victoria at a wheat rally the Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, gave a commitment to wheat growers at a place called Warracknabeal that he would poll all wheat growers if there were to be any substantive changes to the export marketing arrangement for Australia’s bulk wheat. He gave a commitment to those wheat growers, and I remember in this place I supported him because I thought: ‘That is a good stand to take, because you are actually going to confer with the industry before making a decision.’ Alas, once his Liberal masters informed him that that was not what this process was about, he reneged on it and instead put in place a consultative group to travel around Australia to determine the views of growers.

I went to those meetings and no votes were taken. Where there was an attempt to move a motion at the meeting, it was stomped on. Where people presented a point of view, they were interrogated about it. The committee chairman, John Ralph, on a number of occasions made the point that he was there to listen and take the message back to the government to engage in debate on. When people said, ‘We’d like to have some say in this and move a motion here today,’ he refused to listen to and take that message back. We had this consultative committee—

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