Mr MILES (Parliamentary Secretary [Cabinet] to the Prime Minister)(9.31 p.m.) —The speech which we have just heard with regard to this proposed amendment by the opposition is quite amazing really. Here we have a person who was part of a government which instituted the Laidley agreement, under which you would not allow anybody except the TWU to go through the gates, and you come in here and you are talking about competition. What were they doing for 13 years? It is absolutely outrageous that the opposition spokesman for competition would come in here and talk about petrol stations and petrol on an issue that really relates to other sorts of infrastructure in this country, like electricity, or railway lines, or gas pipelines. He is trying to tag on here an issue that he wants to run that has already been defeated in the Senate and is going to be defeated here. It is really absolute grandstanding on the part of the opposition just to waste time with purely political point scoring.

He knows it is a ludicrous suggestion because the essence of what he is saying, in regard to part IIIA, is that these people would have the right to have petrol they owned pumped, stored or refined, but they would not have the right to buy it. What a ludicrous suggestion. You have to own the petrol. Your suggestion is totally flawed. I am not sure where the opposition stands in regard to competition policy because you come in here running a line for competition, free trade and the rest of it, yet the rest of the opposition seems to have a line of going back to the 1960s.

We are opposed to this amendment because there is a range of reasons why this amendment would not work. We certainly do not believe it is sensible to be tacking this amendment, related to the petroleum industry, on to this legislation.

Let me just go over a few points at this stage. The opposition's suggested application of this part IIIA access regime to petrol terminals is fundamentally misconceived. It is true that the petrol industry is vertically integrated, but petrol terminals are not natural monopolies. The opposition's amendment extends the scope of part IIIA far beyond its original intention as enacted by the present opposition.

Secondly, the opposition's amendment is technically flawed. Part IIIA provides access to infrastructure services, such as the service of moving electricity over a grid, not the supply of goods, as such goods are able to be linked to infrastructure services only if they are an integral subsidiary to the infrastructure service. The opposition amendment does not overcome this limitation, it just gives another example of infrastructure services, but this would still be subject to a limitation on goods. People who want access to terminals want petrol. That is the whole reason. It is hardly integral but it is subsidiary to the service.

Accordingly, a person who seeks access to terminal services under the opposition amendment would not have the right to buy petrol, only the right to have petrol they own stored, pumped or refined. So the amendment you are proposing is a ludicrous proposition. It just would not work. We, as a government, do support equally open access to petrol terminals and we are pursuing that and we will continue to, but this is not the place and not the legislation to be trying to tack it onto. Not only that, your proposal is unworkable.