Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Responding to Exceptional Circumstances) Bill 2026. In doing so, I commend the ministers who have led this legislation, the ministers who have led the government's response to the problems arising out of a conflict well and truly out of our control, the Treasurer leading the economic team, the minister for energy and the minister for productivity, as well as the work that goes on within the government through our caucus processes. I think history will show this was just an excellent response to something that really came out of nowhere. I think that the rest of the economy and the rest of the public now feel some security, because we're not talking about it anymore, and that's always a good sign that things are under control. But we didn't get here by accident, and the government, through extremely innovative measures, like the export finance corporation bill, I think achieved things that you wouldn't have thought possible if you were just gaming this strategy out in an office somewhere. It was really a lesson for us to be able to set processes in place to make it easier in the future, and that is what this legislation does. I think that the realisation, which is not always apparent in the community, is how important the role energy plays in our economy is.

I'd like to quote somebody else. I can't remember who it was that said, and it isn't my original thought, but they described the 19th century essentially as being about coal and steam, the 20th century as being about oil and the internal combustion engine and in the 21st century as going to be about electricity and renewable energy. At each points of those new energy ideas coming into the economy, living standards have gone up exponentially. You can see how quickly something like the price of fuel can flow through to living standards and can flow to through to costs not just in the price that we pay at the bowser as consumers but also for businesses as well.

The government having mechanisms in place to be able to deal with things like fuel shortages is critical. This is another part I think of the government's wider strategy to see the Australian economy be more resilient. It is also part of the government's wider strategy to attack cost-of-living pressures through increasing consumer protection. One of the mechanisms that the government is now able to employ, if this bill passes, is something which falls short of declaring a national emergency and falls short of using the emergency powers under the Fuel Act. It allows for a sensible and measured approach by government and business working together to coordinate a response which at any other time might fall foul of competition laws. For example, the response through COVID took approximately six months for the ACCC to authorise the sort of cooperation amongst companies that would have otherwise fallen foul of corporation laws in order for them to coordinate supply of food during the COVID crisis. Six months is just not acceptable. We now know that we need to be able to be more flexible when it comes to fuel, in this case, or to any other sort of any other sort of pressure which is otherwise unforeseen.

The fact is that this also sits well and truly within the Albanese Labor government's commitment to intervening in the economy where the private sector fails. That's why the government, in the recent budget, has a $14-something billion strategy to guarantee fuel supplies coming in the future. But that also fits within a wider government strategy of not letting the important industries to our country just walk out the door and walk overseas, like has happened under previous governments. That's why I think the government really does need to be commended, and the community needs to be assured that this government is responding to those sorts of sovereign risks that exist when our essential industries are under pressure.

As a Queenslander, the investment that the government made, something like $1 billion co-investing with the Queensland government I would credit, to support the Boyne Island smelters is going to secure aluminium production in Gladstone for the future. It is going to secure billions of dollars' worth of investment and hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs. As a Broken Hill boy, I always felt that Whyalla and Port Pirie in South Australia were our sister towns. We were all in the same television network. And so I grew up with an affinity for people in Whyalla and Port Pirie. That's why the federal government and the South Australian government investing billions of dollars to secure our steel supply is something that they should be commended for—and also securing the smelter in Port Pirie. Up in Queensland, you've got hundreds of millions of dollars at this stage going to protecting the smelters in Mount Isa, and there are hundreds of millions of dollars going to the investment, in Western Australia, in urea, which is essential to farming but also to the transport industry.

This government is doing what governments haven't done over the last few decades. We have realised that you cannot just leave it to the market to secure those sorts of important industries and to secure those sorts of important pieces of infrastructure. You just can't leave it to the market. Otherwise, you end up with the car industry walking out the door because you're not prepared to support it. If it weren't for this government taking this approach, you would have seen the steelworks in Whyalla and the smelters in Port Pirie, Gladstone and Mount Isa close. You would have seen Tomago under a lot more pressure than it is now. If government were to turn its back, those industries would walk out the door. Not only would that have a massively negative impact on employment in those regions and across the country, but it would place at risk our sovereign capacity to defend ourselves and to produce for ourselves.

Of course, the investments are not just in critical minerals and critical industries, though the list of those investments is really long and extensive, whether it's the 20 per cent gas reservation or the investment in the Critical Minerals Strategy and in a stockpile. It is not just about those literally elemental industries that Australia relies on; the government's investment and intervention in the housing sector and in the energy sector also need to be highly commended. Over the 10 years of the former government, I think they built something like 370 public housing dwellings. In Forde alone, at a site in Logan Reserve, we're building over 200 social housing dwellings, and I've been there.

The philosophy around public housing that I've always held on to is that public housing isn't there because it's provided out of the goodness of our hearts; public housing is there because you want to provide affordable housing to workers, to help keep the cost of living down and to help keep rents down. When you can do that, you actually take the pressure off wages, which helps business as well. It was written into the charter of the South Australian Housing Trust that it would have a focus on the economic development of the state. I think there is no single bigger productivity measure that a government can do than to provide affordable housing for workers.

And so it is the case with energy as well. Through the batteries program, among many other programs that exist through the government, the amount of electricity being created is higher than at any other point in the past. There's one piece of evidence that I don't think gets the credit it deserves: over the last summer we had more energy use than ever, and there wasn't a blackout nor a single day lost due to a shortage of electricity in the market.

I think that there is an interventionist edge to this government which the public yearn for. I think that there is a lot of dissatisfaction in the community. People absolutely feel like they've been left behind. One of the reasons for that is governments haven't taken control of those essential services, those critical industries, and they've let them wither on the vine to the point where, in the biggest oil shock since the 1970s, we had two oil refineries operating. This legislation fits well and truly within that general strategy. The changes to the penalties for the oil code also sit within the government's wider strategy for consumer protection.

Again, there's a long list there. The government has, for instance, outlawed things like unfair contract terms. I know one case where a young woman moved away from the gym she was going to, and she had a 90-minute one-way trip to get to the gym in order to use it, so she rang up to cancel. The gym said, 'No, you can't cancel over the phone; you need to come in, in person.' It was alright for her to sign up online but not to cancel online. So she was expected to make a three-hour round trip just to cancel. After her persistence and after she showed them the law, she was able to get the gym to cancel her membership. But what if she wasn't so savvy? What about all of those other people who might have just given up and let whatever it is, $20 a week, get wasted?

Whether it's strengthening the unit pricing code—I actually saw it in Woolies myself. I'd heard that they were doing this, and, because I knew they were doing it, I looked out for it the last time I went shopping. There is a practice where they bunch up five bananas together, and they sell that as a unit. It was something like five bucks or six bucks for a bunch of bananas. There was no unit price. You didn't know how much it weighed. When I actually took those bananas and placed them on the scales, they cost twice as much by weight as exactly the same type of bananas sitting next to them. I've heard Woolies excuse this before in the past in the media, saying that they're making it convenient for people. It is convenient for Woolworths that it also happens to cost twice as much. We're going to be cracking down on that.

We've made it easier for people to unsubscribe from online services. We've made it easier for people to be more mobile in the marketplace by outlawing unfair non-compete clauses. Again, these things aren't done just because they're the just and right thing to do, which they are, but they're going to have a practical economic impact on the cost of living for people. They're going to have a practical economic impact when it comes to buying your bananas at Woolies. It's going to have a practical economic impact on workers who are going to feel safer to go looking for a new job without the worry of being penalised by an employer trying to keep them.

I commend this bill to the House. I ask the opposition—I'm not exactly sure what their position is, but I'm not sure they know what their position is either—to support this bill, because this is really a very sensible measure. In the scheme of things, I think it is one part of a very significant change in direction for this country, where you've got a government actually intervening in the economy to make sure that we've got not only the levers to control things when things go badly but also the stockpile of minerals or fuels which are practically needed. So I commend this bill to the House.

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