Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My electorate of Parramatta is a special one. I am sure all members say that, but when it comes to business, it is. It has one of the largest CBDs in the country. But, within a few minutes from that, it also has suburban areas. So, in my electorate of Parramatta, some of the biggest businesses in the country and suburbia live side by side. It is necessary for both the biggest businesses in the country and the smallest ones to flourish in my electorate. We do have some extraordinarily large businesses. We have Coca-Cola, Unilever and Westfield Parramatta, all of which bring an incredible flow of people and business opportunities to the electorate, and they should be well and truly appreciated for that.

But, down the road, just a few minutes away we have some very small shopping centres. It is easy to see over time that the power of those large businesses, with their buying power, their ability to cut prices, their marketing dollars and their capacity to seek opportunities elsewhere can slowly suck the life out of some of the smaller centres nearby. I am struck on a daily basis when I visit those centres at how fragile some of those businesses are. They are incredibly fragile. They are affected greatly by some of the smallest changes in economic fortunes, in availability of parking, in bus routes—you name it. The fragility of those businesses is stark, relative to that of the large businesses.

I would like to say how incredibly important those small shopping centres are. Their value extends beyond just the transaction between the person buying the tomatoes and the person selling them. Those small shopping centres provide a place where people meet, where on a daily basis they see people who know them, where they can be recognised and where people who may perhaps have no other contact with people whom they know well can feel seen on a daily basis. They form an incredibly important part of community life. And, for many people, they also form part of their memories. The same person who sold them their papers when they were a kid, or the same person whom they perhaps worked for as a child, is still selling them their papers today. You cannot underestimate the value of the community function of those very small shopping centres.

One of the speakers on the government side spent quite a bit of time today attacking the state governments on small business regulation. I would like to put on record that the plight of some of our incredibly important small shopping centres in both the cities and the regional areas is so serious that it really does require all three levels of government to take this issue seriously. But today I am in the federal parliament, and I am in the federal opposition, so I am going to talk about federal responsibility. The government has talked for some time about the effectiveness of the Trade Practices Act 1974 in protecting small business. In March 2004, the Senate Economics References Committee brought down a report encouraging the government to amend the Trade Practices Act in favour of protecting small business, but the government is yet to act on that. We have had reports lately that there is a bill to be introduced into the parliament, and we welcome that action, finally; we really do. This is so overdue—it is at least four years overdue—and we really cannot wait any longer. It is sad that, with a government that has been in power for 11 years, all we see today is yet another backbencher calling on the government to do something about this, but it really is well and truly overdue.

We on this side of the House welcome the report that the government will amend the market power and unconscionable conduct provisions of the Trade Practices Act. We appreciate that the government is finally acting to strengthen competition laws to protect small businesses from large companies that are abusing their market power. But, as I said before, this is coming at least four years too late. It is of course an election year, and we have got very used to the government making a few extra promises every time an election comes around—and we are seeing it once again. But I say again that it is about time this happened, and we really look forward to debating the bill in this House.

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