Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Responding to Exceptional Circumstances) Bill 2026 that has been thrust upon this chamber in such unusual circumstances. The coalition is not in a place to oppose sensible measures—it never is—that help manage the fuel crisis and protect households and small businesses, but this bill gives the government and the ACCC significant new powers. They're not powers that that consumer watchdog, the ACCC, required during a global pandemic. They are brand-new powers. They never even asked for these powers during the pandemic. So you can understand why there is a natural suspicion, a desire for scrutiny and a reticence to just rush this legislation through.

This sneaky and tricky Labor government has put these laws in front of us with absolutely no time to consider them and with no means of ongoing parliamentary oversight. That is unusual. But it is not just unusual; it is also dangerous. Giving the government powers that are immune from scrutiny—with not even the opportunity for a Senate disallowance—and that have retrospective application impacts matters as serious as suspensions of competition law, which keeps us safe. This should not be done lightly. An inquiry by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee should be a bare minimum in these circumstances. But this is a government that clearly hates transparency. It doesn't even want to do that—a basic inquiry.

If there is urgency for these laws, why did you not consult on them earlier? Why spring them upon the parliament at the last minute? This is the question that we need to ask. Is there some other part to our fuel crisis that Labor isn't being honest about? Is there something that they know that they are not telling the Australian public—indeed, not even telling the opposition? The Liberal Party will always support sensible deregulation. Do not for a second doubt that. But sensible deregulation or proper measures that allow our markets to operate more efficiently is what we are dedicated to, and we don't understand whether this is exactly that. These very significant sweeping changes with massive implications for consumers are not even going to be explained to the Australian people before they are inflicted upon them.

I call on the government to explain these changes, to allow for that proper parliamentary scrutiny and to tell Australians the truth: why are these laws needed? Why are these exceptional powers needed? And why are they needed urgently? Why are they retrospective? Why are they more expansive than anything that was requested during the pandemic or in past fuel crises? Why are the powers in this bill not limited to just a fuel crisis? Why are they so far-reaching and so expansive? Why not let stakeholders have their say, have their feedback, to ensure that there aren't any unintended consequences, and why is the bill not time-limited? Why is it not sunsetted? This seems to be an enormous risk, but the payoff hasn't been explained. Why is the instrument of the ACCC exempt from disallowance when disallowance is the most important safeguard of the parliament? We want to have these questions answered.

What the bill does is important. It creates a new framework for what are known as exceptional circumstances. The Treasurer will be able to declare that exceptional circumstances exist, and then that decision is disallowable. However, once that decision is made then the ACCC can very rapidly exempt conduct that in any other circumstance would be a breach of the competition law, and those decisions of the ACCC will be exempt from disallowance. This gives enormous powers to a regulator that go beyond the reach of the sovereignty of the parliament. This is intended to allow businesses to coordinate during major disruptions, something that is very good, and the current fuel crisis is an example of that, an obvious one. But the framework is broader than just fuel, and no-one has explained why. It could also apply to other crises—it could apply to a pandemic, for instance, or a major economic disruption. But if the powers weren't needed in the pandemic, why are they needed now?

In a genuine crisis, there is always some coordination that is needed between business and government. We can understand that, and we can understand that businesses might need to coordinate between themselves, too. In normal circumstances we would call that cartel behaviour; in a crisis, we might need it. I can understand that. During a fuel shortage, for instance, there could be changes to supply chains, disruptions or a national emergency. There might be circumstances where businesses need to work together quickly. We've seen those circumstances before and we've successfully navigated them before. The priority today must be keeping fuel and food and essential goods moving. We understand that. Households and small businesses shouldn't have to suffer because the law is too slow to respond—but is it too slow to respond? That's the question. This is the reason the coalition is prepared to work constructively on the bill with the government, but only if the government is willing to allow basic and commonsense courtesy of inquiry, because, let's face it, scrutiny of legislation is the role of this chamber, and it is being circumvented. It is being circumvented by a government that hates scrutiny, that hates transparency and, more importantly, that hates accountability.

These are enormous powers that we are giving the Treasurer and, indeed, a regulator. Competition law exists for a reason. It is there to protect consumers, it is there to protect small businesses, it stops large players from coordinating in a way that damages competition. When you have competition in a market, it keeps prices low, and then consumers benefit. So you can understand why any exemption from competition law needs to be treated very seriously indeed. We understand temporary coordination in a crisis may be necessary, but anticompetitive conduct must never be allowed to become normal, because if anticompetitive conduct becomes normal and competition is driven down, it is the consumers that pay the price through higher prices. That's why it is important to get the balance right, and that's the job of this parliament, that's the job of this chamber and that's what is being circumvented by rushing these laws through.

The existing system that we have now is workable. It's worked before. It's worked in many different environments, be they pandemics or fuel crises. The government and the ACCC argued that the current authorisation framework is too slow and too restrictive. That's something that I am open-minded to if it is in the circumstances of a particular crisis. The government and the ACCC are saying that disallowance and public consultation requirements can get in the way of a rapid crisis response. Now, potentially in some circumstances, they may be right, but that is yet to be explained. It is yet to be explained to those from whom you are seeking support for this legislation. It's yet to be explained to the public.

I reiterate that the current framework that we have used, particularly during COVID, has worked perfectly well. In fact, during COVID, the coalition government worked with the ACCC to get an exemption from competition laws many times, and some of those exemptions were enabled with less-than-24-hour turnaround. That sounds to me like a system that works pretty well. If that's the case, why are these new laws necessary? Moreover, it actually seems to be working pretty well in the current crisis as well, so would it then be more appropriate to take the time to test whether these new and very expansive powers, this new framework, is actually necessary? If it has worked before the way it is now and it's working currently, why do we need these powers? We should also test whether this bill is the narrowest possible fix to the problem that we face today rather than expanding powers out to last into the future for problems that we can't even foresee.

One of the concerns the coalition has is that potentially the Treasurer's declaration power is way too broad. The Treasurer's power to declare exceptional circumstances is essentially unlimited. It's not confined to this fuel crisis; it could be anything else. Once that declaration is made, it then opens the door for the ACCC, a regulator. The ACCC can then exempt big businesses from competition laws, which the government will then say would not be disallowable by this parliament. So the ACCC is giving very big, already powerful businesses the right not to be competitive, the right to cartel behaviour, and we can't exempt that from this parliament. Once it happens, it's done. That's why you can see we are very cautious about any attempts to take away that parliamentary scrutiny. The Senate inquiry, should there be one—if there were one—would test whether that threshold is tight enough. It would also test whether the safeguards are strong enough. Unfortunately, we're not going to have that inquiry, because this is a government that wants to deny scrutiny of its own legislation.

The Treasurer's declaration—and this is good news—can be disallowed by parliament, but that's not the concern here. The concern is whether the individual ACCC exemptions made after that can be disallowed. This is the significant issue that we face. It means that parliament can reject the broad declaration of a crisis but it can't directly disallow the specific exemptions that may affect competition in particular markets. That weakens parliamentary oversight. Exactly what it is that we are here to do is being weakened by this government because it is rushing through legislation that has not had the proper scrutiny.

The ACCC exemptions need to be made public within only seven days. That is also a concern. We should have higher expectations of transparency than that. Understandably, in some circumstances, a short delay may be acceptable. It may be understandable. But these exemptions can potentially authorise conduct that would otherwise breach competition law, and the public, the parliament and affected businesses—those businesses that potentially will be dramatically affected by those competition laws or the setting aside of competition laws—should know what is being authorised as soon as possible. You can imagine, if you were a small business that was going to be affected by these laws and you didn't find out about them for seven days, how potentially damaging that could be. So the Senate should be able to test whether faster publication, notification or reporting is in fact possible. Transparency should be built into the framework from the very start.

Also, the bill is backdated, weirdly, to 1 April, and I cannot understand that. Ther's no reason for that specified date. The Treasurer's office has simply said that they want flexibility. But retrospectivity is very unusual, and it's simply not good enough. Retrospective lawmaking should be very rare, and retrospective competition law exemptions should require an explicit and clear justification. So the Senate should be able to test why that 1 April date has been chosen.

The bill may be well intentioned. I don't doubt that. But because of these significant new powers to the Treasurer and to the ACCC, the Senate should be able to test whether the existing ACCC powers are genuinely adequate, whether the Treasurer's declaration power is too broad, whether the ACCC's exemptions should be disallowable, whether transparency requirements are strong enough, whether the retrospective date is justified, whether the powers are properly time limited and whether they're in scope, and whether there should be stronger sunset and review mechanisms. These are not unreasonable requests in any circumstance but particularly when legislation is being rushed through.

Can we be very clear that we support practical steps that protect households, small businesses and essential supply chains and that we will work constructively on measures that help manage this fuel crisis, as we have from the very start. But the fact that the government wants to limit parliamentary scrutiny and doesn't even want to give us the courtesy of having the scrutiny of its bills that limit scrutiny—and now the Greens, those champions of transparency and scrutiny, are going along with this—well, I think, 'So much for a transparent government.'