Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

These are extraordinary times, with the fuel crisis roiling the world, but they're no more extraordinary than the times that we did face during COVID. We heard, in the previous contribution, the minister say, 'Oh, we shouldn't be slaves to what has gone before.' It was quite a remarkable statement, I thought, because surely, surely as legislators we should use experience and evidence to guide us with what we do today and we actually should look at what happened before in similar circumstances and at whether that is instructive or provides any lessons for how we should act today.

I want to start there in this debate on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Responding to Exceptional Circumstances) Bill 2026. It's about what happened during COVID with regard to competition laws and the need to take urgent action in difficult—in the term the government said here, exceptional—circumstances. There were definitely exceptional circumstances during the COVID lockdowns and the like.

The key point to make here is that we have the ability in current competition laws to provide exemptions to businesses that have to coordinate and cooperate to respond to exceptional circumstances. Obviously, during the COVID experience, at times, food suppliers—the financial industry, the aviation industry—had to work together to respond to extraordinary circumstances and in doing so were potentially, because they were talking together and cooperating, going to fall foul of competition laws. They could apply, under existing laws, to the ACCC to have something called an authorisation. They could authorise the notionally, potentially anticompetitive conduct because it was in the public benefit. The point the government made earlier is that this process is too unwieldy and it will take too long in responding to such a crisis as we're seeing today.

Let's look back at this experience that the minister wants to close his eyes to. Under that process, companies can ask for an interim authorisation that can be provided quickly and can respond to exceptional circumstances. In fact, during COVID the ACCC provided such interim authorisation orders in 28 different circumstances. There's a very useful report that I encourage all senators who want to consider this bill to look at. It's only a short report, but it's a report that the ACCC put out after this process, in April 2021, listing COVID-19 related authorisations. There's a very clear chart in this report, on page 3, that lists the 28 different authorisations, and it shows how quickly they were able to make a decision on the authorisation.

So let's keep in mind here that the government's point is that this interim authorisation process is too unwieldy, that it takes too long, that we have to do too much consultation. Well, when we go to the ACCC's reports to see what their lived experience was with the authorisation process, they were in fact able to turn around authorisations often within less than 24 hours. Let's just go through it, with a real-world example. The Australian Banking Association made an application: zero business days, less than 24 hours. Suncorp applied to be exempt from competition laws: again, a less-than-24-hours response. And there were many other companies, like Coles, the Motor Trades Association, the NBN, AIP—I'm not exactly sure what that stands for, nor SSA—and AEC, which I think is the electricity companies, as well as various state government. They all received authorisation within less than 24 hours, and there were a whole lot of others that were within two, three, four or five days.

So why does the government need to rush this right now? They seem to be hoodwinking us here with this quite transparently incorrect advice they've just provided to the Senate, that somehow the existing processes are too unwieldy and take too long. Well, no: the existing laws were used during COVID—which, as I said, was no more exceptional than what we face today—to provide exemption from competition laws within hours, not days. So I'd hope we're not about to go to level 3 fuel restrictions in the next 24 hours. That's one of the reasons the government has used to justify these laws—that we might need to restrict access to fuel if things get worse. Well, I don't think it's going to happen within 24 hours. I don't think it's going to happen within a couple of days. It's probably not going to happen within a week or so.

Given that, and given that the authorisation process can clearly work within a week, within 24 hours, what is exactly the justification for this bill? It seems very flimsy. And I want to make very clear here, to also combat the absurd resort to partisanship that the minister engaged in straightaway—'It's all you guys; you're just terrible'—I'm not going to repeat that to the government. I'm not necessarily accusing the government of that. I just want a proper investigation of what goes through this chamber. We are happy to work with the government if there is a legitimate and clear need for laws of this kind. Our attitude on this is exemplified by what we did in the last sitting period, when we did support immediate and urgent changes to the Export Finance Australia legislation so the government could help underwrite fuel coming into the country. We absolutely supported that. We had a very detailed briefing with the energy minister and saw the need and said, 'Yep, we're going to support you on that.' We moved some amendments that we would have liked the government to support, but we ultimately let it go through.

So I'm more than happy to do that. I just think we need to investigate this, given the clear questions I've just raised and some more that I'll come to. We should see this go to an inquiry of some kind. Surely, given the mammoth changes being made, which I'll come to in more detail, this should go to an inquiry. And I think, given the changes, that it should be in inquiry that goes for some weeks so we can get information maybe from some of these businesses that had experience with the COVID situation and get evidence from the companies that would potentially be exempted from competition laws and of course evidence from the ACCC, who we're told support this, but we're not allowed to talk them, apparently before this goes through. Why can't that happen?

As I said, we're very cooperative here. I'd like an inquiry to last for weeks, but I've suggested to the government, 'Well, let's do a snap one.' If we do one now we can at least have the ACCC in here at a moment's notice; they're just down the road. We could get them in here and have a chat with them for an hour or so, and we can consider it tomorrow in the cold light of day, rather than what I expect the government to do here now, which is to use their usual guillotine process to shut the Senate down and not ask questions on behalf of the Australian people—and that's how mistakes happen.

I want to say, notwithstanding the points I made earlier, that there are some broader issues raised by this legislation that the government seems quite reticent to highlight. I mentioned one earlier. If this bill is about simply allowing the government to respond to future circumstances that might arise in the next few weeks—these potential future restrictions on people's use of fuel that the government is flagging and the rationing that the government is obviously opening up the can on here with this legislation—and if it's needed to deal with something urgently, quickly, and to keep fuel moving, why does this bill exempt conduct that occurred in the past? Keep in mind that this bill allows the Treasurer to declare exceptional circumstances going back to 1 April this year. That's going back more than a month, six weeks or so. Why is that urgent? That conduct has happened, so we can't change that. We don't have a DeLorean; we can't go back and change it. It's happened.

Maybe there's a need to exempt that. If we're going to exempt past conduct, that is a very, very serious thing and should take due consideration through an inquiry. Why do we need to rush that this week? We could put that bit off the table. You could split that bit out of the bill and deal with it in the future. But the stuff in the past definitely needs consideration, particularly given there have been a number of legitimate complaints about some of the potentially anticompetitive conduct that occurred in the early stage of this crisis.

I've had a lot of complaints from different fuel distributors, large fuel users, farmers, manufacturers and the like who have said that they don't understand why, when there was enough fuel in this country and the government told us there was enough fuel in this country, they couldn't access it. There seemed to be some hoarding. There seemed to be some level of conduct that might have been anticompetitive. We've heard stories of the major fuel companies going around to businesses that had been supplied by the independent sector, trying to give them sweetheart deals to take their market share, to take their business from the independent fuel suppliers. These things deserve investigation. In fact, not only do they deserve investigation, but the Treasurer himself, this government itself, had referred such conduct and allegations to the ACCC. I don't think we've seen a conclusion from those investigations yet.

Why would we pass legislation here now that would potentially exempt, restrict and stop those investigations from continuing, given the legitimate issues that were raised and the very high price that Australian fuel users had to pay in the early stage of the crisis? Some missed out, some couldn't plant and some couldn't go about their business, because of those fuel restrictions. They deserve answers, not a rubber stamp from their own Senate potentially exempting any kind of anticompetitive conduct through that period. That doesn't add up at all.

The other thing that doesn't add up in this bill is that, while the government has hinged its argument on the need to deal with this fuel crisis, this bill is a lot broader than that. It doesn't restrict the Treasurer's definition or declaration of an exceptional circumstance to only this crisis or for only the next few months. Instead it gives a new, broad power that could be used for any potential reason going forward, if and when a treasurer decides there's an exceptional circumstance. Our competition laws are there for a reason. They're there to protect small business. They're there to protect competition in our country, which is so important to deliver fair returns to farmers and small businesses and to deliver good products and good service to consumers. It's a very serious thing to exempt businesses from competition laws, and that's why we've got a very detailed authorisation process. It's flexible, as it was during COVID. But to get more than an interim order, to get a full authorisation, yes, you do have to go through an extensive process, as you should. But this bill undermines that entire process and undermines it across the whole economy—not just to deal with a particular circumstance.

The question that has to be raised is: why isn't there some kind of sunset clause or something on this? We on this side of the chamber will consider, through this debate, why the Senate wouldn't say, 'We'll give you this for the next couple of months while we go away and think about it in more detail.' Again, I still don't understand why the retrospective stuff has to be done in the next few months. But, if there is this urgent need, I am more than willing to be cooperative here. I haven't made a single partisan point here. I'm raising particular and detailed issues with this bill, which is surely the role of this place. If we were doing our job, we'd sit down and consider this.

I'm happy to sit here tonight. I'm happy to meet the ACCC at any time tonight. I was hoping to get an earlier night tonight. It was a late night last night to lock up the budget, but I'm happy to do my job and stick around as long as I can to protect competition and our economy in this place. I think we need to look at the issue of the disallowability of some of the aspects of this bill. We hardly received a copy of this bill this morning. We had a briefing a few days ago that I didn't attend. I'm not the shadow minister, but I'm repping them here in this place. The information I've received is that the Treasurer's declaration of exceptional circumstances will be disallowable. Okay, good. Parliament can review that. But, once he or she makes that decision of exceptional circumstances, the ACCC then has the power to exempt certain conduct under a broad exemption provided by the Treasurer.

My understanding is that those ACCC determinations under this bill are not disallowable. They will not be reviewable by this chamber or the other place. To me, that seems a glaring omission that could be fixed with a relatively easy amendment. I move:

Omit all words after "That", substitute "the bill be referred to the Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 22 June 2026, with particular reference to:

(a) whether the existing Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) powers are genuinely inadequate;

(b) whether the Treasurer's declaration power is too broad;

(c) whether ACCC exemptions should be disallowable;

(d) whether transparency requirements are strong enough;

(e) whether the retrospective start date is justified;

(f) whether the powers are properly limited in time and scope; and

(g) whether there should be stronger sunset and review mechanisms".

I'm doing this is all on the fly, of course, given the way the government has approached this. We have now distributed an amendment that seeks to have this proper inquiry. This inquiry is listed to come back on the first sitting day of the next sitting period. I realise that's more than a month away, but, as I said earlier, we are more than happy to negotiate and be cooperative on this.

Given the wide scope of this bill that I've outlined, I think that a couple of proper hearings with businesses, with those companies that would be exempted, with departments and with the ACCC would be useful. But, at the very least, if the government and the Greens down there can't agree to a proper inquiry, why don't we just have a snap one? We could do that tonight. We could at least talk to the department and the ACCC and do our job. Let's just do our job. These are exceptional circumstances, but that means we should work even harder for the Australian people.