Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move Democrat amendment (9) on sheet 5340 revised:

(9)    Clause 93, page 71 (after line 3), after paragraph (1)(a), insert:

           (aa)    the community store’s capacity to train locally employed community members;

This is an alternative amendment. It is quite a small one and therefore one which would be given some genuine consideration if we were to assume that there was any degree of willingness to engage on the part of the government. It relates to the licensing of community stores. In the legislation, there is a list of criteria which are assessable maters in relation to the licensing of community stores. It includes the following:

          (a)           the community store’s capacity to participate in, and (if applicable) the community store’s record of compliance with, the requirements of the income management regime;

          (b)           the quality, quantity and range of groceries and consumer items, including healthy food and drink, available and promoted at the community store;

          (c)           the financial structure, retail practices and governance practices of the community store;

          (d)           any matters specified by the Minister under subsection 125(2) to be assessable matters;

          (e)           any other matter that the Secretary considers relevant to the provision of high quality community store services.

This is simply an amendment from the Democrats that seeks to add another assessable matter as a definite criteria, that proposed assessable matter being the community store’s capacity to train locally employed community members.

We are all—quite rightly—talking about the need for any type of positive result to have long-term benefits. Part of that with a community store is or should be the ability for that store to train up locally employed community members. That is not the be-all and end-all of criteria, and it is not the sole reason a licence should be issued, amended, extended or removed, but we believe it is a sufficiently important issue that it is worth having as an assessable matter the capacity to train locally employed community members to staff the community store. It is something that is minor in the scheme of the totality of the legislation, but something that the Democrats nonetheless believe would be beneficial.