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

We have very little time to ask questions of the government about this extraordinary piece of legislation. In the limited time I have, before the government once again gags debate on special legislation—stopping the job of the Senate to look at these types of things—I want to focus on one aspect of the bill. It's the aspect that the minister and the government have just not explained. It's the provision of the bill, in section 92E, which allows these exceptional circumstances to be designated—these exemptions from competition laws—to go all the way back to 1 April 2026.

The minister, in wrapping up the debate before, said that we need to do these things to help keep delivering fuel, fertiliser and other important commodities to our country. We support them on that. We have supported special legislation on this. But to do those things in the future does not require us to exempt people from laws in the past. Those things in the past have already been done. A lot of my colleagues and I are scratching our heads, trying to understand why the government needs to exempt conduct—potentially anticompetitive conduct; that's why the exemptions are here—from stuff that has happened, going all the way back to April Fools' Day, 1 April, this year.

If this was about the future, if this was about protecting Australians in the future, why do you need to go back to the past? What is the government hiding—that's what I'd like to know. What is the justification for this? I would particularly like to know if the ACCC has asked the government for these powers, and, if so, why? Why? As other senators in this debate have raised, we did have a lot of complaints come to us about the potential anticompetitive conduct that occurred in the early stages of this crisis. There were shortages of key commodities. That's a ripe opportunity for people with market share and market power to abuse the situation, to take market share, to kill competitors and the like, and now the government is potentially exempting all of that suspected alleged conduct from review, scrutiny and penalty, if indeed there were things done at that time.

Unfortunately, we have very limited time. I'd hope that the minister could deal with these issues briefly so that there may be some time to ask some more follow-up questions, but that is the key reason why the opposition remains sceptical of the need to rush this legislation with such great haste.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think there are three propositions there. Firstly, let me make it clear that the ACCC support these laws and have advocated for the flexibility to use their powers quickly in a crisis. That is their view. They made this clear when they briefed Mr Taylor, Mr Wilson and Mr Hogan from the other place on Monday.

In terms of retrospectivity and 1 April, businesses, the regulators and departments, including my department, have been meeting regularly since the war in the Middle East broke out. That includes forums like the National Coordination Mechanism and the supermarket supply chain effort that is going on, led by my department. That is really important work, and it does involve a response that is led by government, but it must have those firms at the table, because we're not North Korea, where we would be directing complex supply chains. They are the experts in that work. But having government and regulators at the table leading mechanisms like that supermarket supply chain work is the right thing to do in order to be prepared to deal with all of the contingencies and to not be complacent when we have made very good progress.

There is more fuel in the country today than there was when the war broke out. That is because of the government's efforts here. There is no complacency from us on these questions. It would be very good if the conflict finished tomorrow, but that is not in our control. In the government's control is what we as Australians do collectively to deal with this. That is why the ACCC supports the legislation here. I think they've made it clear that they'd prefer that it be unamended, but we'll do what we need to do to secure passage of this so that we can continue with that important work for Australians.

You could leave things as they are. During the COVID period it took many, many months after orders were sought for those orders to be granted. It's our view that the arrangements in areas like fuel supply mitigate against getting fuel to country towns in a cooperative way. When there's a shock—there are arrangements that people make; independent fuel retailers purchase largely on the spot market—everything freezes up. It particularly freezes up when you've got people from One Nation and the Liberals and the Nationals on their social media telling people to stock up. That is—

I don't look at this stuff. It gets printed out; it gets popped on my seat. I don't have any social media on my phone. I'm not interested in your posts, Senator Canavan, or anybody else's actually. What we're interested in doing is giving the ACCC the capacity to act in the national interest to allow Australians in these kinds of situations to work together to support industry, farmers, country towns, our mining sector, our forestry sector and other areas that require diesel and fuel to function effectively. That's our job, and we're going to do it in the Australian nation interest.