Mr MARTIN (4:52 PM) —Earlier today when we were discussing the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 , we raised some concerns about class action for restrictive trade practices. When the ALP responded to the Reid report, we took the intent of the recommendations of the report in good faith—that the provisions relative to restrictive trade practices, according to the fair trading report, would assist small business. Yet the government played a pick and choose game when they responded to the fair trading report refusing, for example, to implement the key component—a national uniform retail tenancy code. In fact, a class action by small business would have been made a whole lot easier if the uniform retail tenancy code had been introduced. But the government chose to ignore its own backbench recommendations about a national approach to systematically assisting small business. Labor sought to implement the recommendations of the report in its entirety, including the uniform retail tenancy code, but the government voted against the ALP amendments.

The Reid report did not make any formal representations about retrospectivity. The Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, Mr Reith, has never mentioned retrospectivity in any speeches to the parliament. The Howard government and Professor Allan Fels have now displayed their own devious intentions for the restrictive practices provision, something that the ALP and the committee members of the fair trading inquiry could not have possibly foreseen.

At no time in the committee hearings and during the whole inquiry was the possibility raised that the ACCC could use this class action provision to attack the legitimate actions of the MUA. Nobody could have foreseen throughout the discussions and deliberations of the fair trading inquiry the machiavellian and underhanded intentions of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business in using this class action to attack the MUA. The underhandedness of this provision is compounded when you realise that the government's failure to implement the uniform retail tenancy code makes it almost impossible for small business in most states in Australia to organise themselves into a collective force when negotiating with recalcitrant landlords. It is not until the uniform retail tenancy code is in place that this could be achieved.