Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, it is great to see you and the whole chamber here to hear about what a rotten piece of legislation we have before us right now. Colleagues might recall that it was some time back in November when our side of the chamber introduced a price-signalling bill to deal with the gap in the competition law. The Treasurer was repeatedly warned year after year in petrol inquiries and in decisions on mergers and acquisitions and on areas of concern in other parts of the economy, where the ACCC was saying to the Treasurer, 'Please give us some price signalling powers to tackle that near-collusive conduct that cannot be addressed by Australia's competition laws.' It took the coalition to implement a private member's bill. It was like a cattle prod in the side of the Treasurer, who had to do something.

Despite the coalition not having the resources of the Commonwealth and not having the resources of lawyers and tens of thousands of public servants we got the job done and developed a new piece of competition law that tackled anti-competitive price signalling. I emphasise anti-competitive price signalling, because any members in this place who have ever had any interest whatsoever in competition law will know that price signalling can sometimes be advantageous to consumers and pro-competition; it can deliver better results for consumers and better results for the economy. There is no blanket evil on price signalling. It can be positive or it can be negative. What was required was carefully crafted legislation to take out and deal with the anti-competitive price signalling that may occur and may damage competition in our economy and is detrimental to the interests of consumers. That was what was needed, not the ham-fisted, 'mine is bigger than yours' approach we ended up seeing from the Treasurer. After the introduction of the coalition's private member's bill the government came out and said yes, despite the government and the Treasurer being asleep at the wheel, despite there being no minister for competition. Do you know, competition policy has been relegated to the unnaturally handsome, but still parliamentary secretary, David Bradbury, the extra on Sea Patrolso close to his election, so close to his political death he ends up as an extra on Sea Patrol. He is a lovely man but he ain't no minister. He may be one day, when there is a future Labor government. When he is in his fifties or something like that he may be a minister. They do not even have a minister for competition law. What they have is a Treasurer, a Treasurer not known for his economic policy nous but for his self-opinion as a political heavy-hitter. The Treasurer is pretty keen on engaging in combative political debate that vaguely has some relevance to the economy. What he is not is somebody with a commitment to sound economic policy to support the wellbeing and prosperity of our country.

So what does the Treasurer do? The Treasurer sits back, realises he should have acted years ago after ignoring the pleas from the ACCC. He sees that the coalition has managed to develop a very credible and sound price-signalling bill and he thinks, 'Golly, I'd better do something; we'd better do something.' He comes out with this idea, months after the coalition has released its private member's bill, with an exposure draft. Even with all those resources, they drop out an exposure draft. But it takes a very special gift to be so incompetent and disengaged, as our Treasurer is, to drop out an exposure draft that lets loose with a tsunami of criticism from competition lawyers, and to then be able to ignore all of that advice and bring legislation into the chamber that is still deficient and less competent than the opposition's private member's bill. What kind of a gift does that take! Our Treasurer has managed to do that.

After all of the legwork that has been done for him by the coalition and after a process of asking people for their input, the Treasurer in a gifted way ignored all of that input and all of the processes that should be there to help collaboratively develop a piece of competition law that needs to be carefully thought through. What do we get from the Treasurer? There is a common position where both sides of parliament think this needs to be addressed and there is a collaborative and cooperative opposition that does the legwork for him, an opposition that works with the Selection Committee to get a parliamentary inquiry to examine this carefully, because getting it wrong could have very substantial consequences for our economy. All of that goodwill, all of that legwork, all of that competent public policy work, and our Treasurer still manages to mess it up!

The Treasurer then takes his effort at the Competition and Consumer Amendment Bill, the exposure draft, and brings a bill into this chamber—and what does he manage to do? He manages to ignore some of the most recognised and competent competition academics in the country. He manages to ignore some of the most expert competition lawyers in the major law firms. He manages to ignore all the international best practice about how to deal with price signalling with facilitating concerted practices that may be anti-collusive. But the Treasurer manages to ignore all that wisdom and bring in here an undercooked, underdone, underdeveloped bill that deserves to be rejected by this parliament.

But on top of that, we put in place a parliamentary inquiry to examine our private member's bill. And the government is keen to allow months for that to happen. We are even blessed with a visit from our excellent colleagues from the ACCC, on a very short leash about what they can actually say. They came along, we had the Bankers Association calmed a little bit—because they were apoplectic about what the government was doing. They had seen this exposure draft but not the government's final product, so they came along. It was all about everyone wanting to have a look at the coalition's private member's bill. And then what happens? The government brings in its bill. Do you know how many people got to appear before the committee on the government's bill? Zero! Not one person was given the courtesy of being heard by the House of Representatives Economics Committee.

And how many exchanges with those same policy experts, so available to examine my private member's bill, were made available to the committee to look at the government's bill? An egg: a big zero; nobody. So within a period of days the Treasurer comes in and goes, 'Here's my bill.' The business community was given about five days to deal with the Treasurer's finished product on changing the competition laws in our economy. Everyone works their tails off. They put in a submission. I get to look at them when? A couple of days ago. And what do we find? All of the wise counsel and the advice, the cautionary tales, the stories about how exemptions are not going to work—what happens with all that advice? The government ignores it. What a gift: the Treasurer takes a common position of a need to improve the competition law. The Treasurer takes the legwork of the coalition, that actually got the process going and prompted the government to do something quite belatedly. The Treasurer takes the collaborative willingness of this side of the House to work through these bills through the government controlled House economics committee.

And then what does the Treasurer do, with a special kind of gift? He manages to come up with a divergent pathway. He is entitled to do that. But then he comes up with a completely divisive approach to trying to tackle this challenge and produces defective legislation that fails any economic public policy and competition law test. And then he diminishes this parliament by saying, 'Well, the House economics committee can have a red hot crack at Billson's bill, but we won't let them get anywhere near the government's bill.'

The government should be condemned for the way it has handled this issue. It risks damage to the economy, it risks damage to the economic wellbeing of Australia—and the only upside is all of a sudden I have 21 more minutes to keep going! There is some upside to what is happening tonight!

What we have is a very poor piece of legislation. The government's bill before the House has two key categories in it. One is what is called a per se liability. That per se liability basically says: you do this stuff, you've broken the law. And it is justified on the basis that those offences have no redeeming quality whatsoever, that they should be a blanket prohibition and you have broken the law. That is the argument. But on these per se provisions, that are so clear-cut, so demonstrably evil in the eyes of the government, they have then come up with a shopping list of exemptions. Most people are thinking, 'Hang on, if it's so clear-cut that you should introduce a per se liability for conduct that might both be procompetitive and anticompetitive, we don't care.' The government say it is so evil you will immediately have committed an offence if you do any of those things. And what do the government also say? 'We don't care if it does or doesn't damage competition. We don't care if you did or didn't mean it.' That is what a per se liability is. If this bill passes we will have the rare of distinction of being the only jurisdiction in the world that has taken an area of near collusive behaviour that can both be procompetitive and anti­competitive, proconsumer and anticonsumer, and we have decided it is all bad. What a moronic way of drafting this legislation! All of this could have been overcome if the government were not so arrogant, so pigheaded, so politically motivated and if their mine-is-bigger-than-yours approach to this change to competition law had not driven them to this point now where we have a defective bill that should not pass this parliament. There is no way this bill should pass the parliament.

Mr Bradbury interjecting—

My friend, the extra from Sea Patrol, interjects—I hear a seagull in the background and the waves! He asks me, 'What about the amendment?' He has an amendment on one issue, and this per se area of prohibition deals with private comm­unication. If you have a distressed business or a household that is insolvent and it owes money to more than one bank, do you know what happens? The banks have to talk to each other. They say, 'Hey, Bank, how much do they owe you?' And they say, 'They owe us this much. How much do they owe you?' They try and work out some way through this financially distressed or insolvent position to get that person out of the circumstances they are in. Under the government's original bill, they would have broken the law—a very standard business practice. That area, they realised belatedly, was something that should be addressed.

What happened yesterday? We got an amendment dropped on us. This bill was so magnificent that it did not even need to be reviewed, and we got an amendment dropped on us. What is that amendment? It partly goes towards dealing with one of a dozen problems with the bill. What about the other 11? Are we just going to let those go? What about issues of syndicated loans? What about issues of joint ventures that go beyond a project or an enterprise to joint venture or the joint acquisition of assets and goods? They have not managed to come up with those things. I want to share this with the parliament because I am sure everyone is absolutely gripped by this topic! Let me share with you an assessment. This is how one of the leading competition law experts in Australia characterised the government's bill:

The CCA Bill does not resolve the fundamental problems with the Exposure Draft.

They go on to say:

The CCA Bill is highly unsatisfactory and should not be enacted.

My particular favourite is the assessment that this bill is world's worst practice in dealing with price signalling and facilitating practices. Is that the hallmark of a good piece of legislation?

Mr Speaker, I look up at the clock and I see I have 16½ minutes to go—it is a beautiful thing! On the basis of 16½ minutes to go, I do seek leave to continue my remarks. I am pretty certain I could make some useful contribution in the 16 minutes that appear to be still available to me.

Leave granted.

Debate adjourned.