Mrs HULL (1:24 PM) —I rise today to speak about the Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005 and the amendments within it that will certainly have a positive impact on my region. Far from being negative, as previous speakers from the opposition have been on this issue, I see this legislation as a very positive thing. I say that on behalf of businesses and producers in my electorate of Riverina. There are two areas in this bill that are of great interest to me and the constituents that I represent. For many years now I have expressed my concern at the power of big business being much to the detriment of small and medium size businesses in my local community. Because of the buying power of large companies, many of my small businesses are often put at a competitive disadvantage. They are currently unable to form agreements with other local businesses to increase their buying power and make substantial savings when purchasing products and services, agreements which would enable them to stay in business and facilitate opportunities of choice for many of the people in my electorate. These amendments will go a long way to assist small business to compete with big business and contribute to the growth of local economies. They will not go the entire way in many of the areas that we will require in the future, but they are a major leap forward. I say that on behalf of the people who have constantly lobbied me over the years to ensure that they have some semblance of equity in this whole association.

It has been possible for small business groups to obtain authorisation for collective bargaining arrangements, but this process can be extremely expensive and time consuming for small business. Why would you go into the process when you have to pay for a determination of whether you can actually collective bargain? That has been one of the greatest deterrents to the people I represent who are not just in the production field but in the medical field as well. When you are looking to provide services rather than withdraw services, there is still a significant amount of expense involved in being able to do that. The collective bargaining elements in this bill will assist to reduce the regulatory burden on small and medium size enterprises by making the process much simpler and far speedier. This will be made possible by introducing a notification process for collective bargaining by small business dealing with large business, as an alternative to an authorisation process.

The proposed collective bargaining arrangements allow for third parties to make a bargaining notification on behalf of a group of small businesses. So I come to my citrus and horticultural producers, as well as local small to medium enterprises, who are encountering the impact of the power of large supermarket companies like Woolworths and Coles. It has been a constant source of concern to me for a long time just exactly how they can engage as community citizens when they hold the balance of market power. I remember having a major debate over a number of years as to how I could get bigger and better dollars for the citrus industry. At times I was seeing my fellows getting a very limited amount per tonne for their bins of oranges and then, when I went into a supermarket, I would see the very same oranges on the shelf for $2.99 a kilo. At any given time I would find there was pretty much an amazing exploitation of either the general public or the growers that I represent. A transaction value has now been included in the amendments to determine eligibility to ensure the process is simple with no intrusive investigation. I believe that is one of the significant elements in the bill.

The bill provides that collective bargaining arrangements will receive immunity at the end of 14 days. The regulations will extend this period to 28 days in the first year and last up to three years in the absence of objection by the commission at any time during this period. The onus will be on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to provide notice that the public benefit from the arrangement does not outweigh the detriment resulting from the arrangement. The commission already authorises collective bargaining arrangements, including those by chicken growers, dairy farmers, sugarcane growers and small private hospitals. The extension of these collective bargaining arrangements to other industries will now contribute greatly to the growth of small to medium enterprises in the Riverina. I certainly welcome this and I congratulate the Treasurer for this decisive action.

A number of industry associations may represent small businesses in the collective bargaining process, including the National Farmers Federation, which is an ideal organisation that really knows first-hand the interests of growers and producers and will be able to negotiate in their interests. Other representatives include the Australian Private Hospitals Association, the Australian Hotels Association and the Motor Trades Association of Australia, which I have a keen interest in. The Australian Private Hospitals Association, for example, assisted eight small private hospitals in Sydney and regional New South Wales to collectively bargain with large health funds or groups of health funds. I have an intense interest in the Motor Trades Association of Australia because over many years I had business interests in the motor vehicle repair industry, and my family still do.

The Motor Trades Association of Australia and its affiliates have an opportunity to represent the hundreds and hundreds of small businesses such as smash repairers, mechanical workshops and a whole host of others—for example, in potential collective bargaining arrangements with large motor vehicle insurers. We have just seen a Productivity Commission report on motor vehicle insurance issues. This area definitely needs action. I urge the MTA to look at the benefits that this legislation is providing and to take up the cudgel for their members, because if nobody is willing to take up the cudgel for members it will be to the detriment of the people of Australia. You will lose small businesses and you will lose the people who are out there at the moment creating wealth and employing people. They are responsible for their own employment and they are paying rent. They are contributing to local economies. But if organisations do not utilise the value of this legislation to ensure that small and medium businesses can continue to operate in an increasingly difficult competitive regime, then it is certainly a waste of those opportunities.

The second amendment which is of interest to my electorate relates to the exclusionary provisions, price fixing and joint ventures. In recent months an enormous amount of attention has been brought to the ongoing disparity of fuel prices that exists between the regional centre of Wagga Wagga and other regional communities throughout New South Wales and Victoria. Our local residents are concerned about the significant difference in price. They have now formed the Wagga Wagga Fuel Watchdog Committee to monitor this issue, seek out ways to address this disparity and ensure fuel prices in Wagga Wagga are fair. We cannot understand why, on any given day of the week, Wagga Wagga people are paying 10c or more a litre higher than any surrounding district or equivalent centre in New South Wales and Victoria or anywhere across Australia. It has baffled us for a long time: why are our fuel prices artificially higher than in any other area? We can take into consideration all of the issues associated with the ever-increasing cost of crude oil, but that is not what we are talking about. Over and above all of that, we are talking about the fact that there is still, at best, a 10c difference in fuel price in one town.

The residents in the local community and the business community are of course feeling that there must be something wrong. The watchdog group includes representatives from the Wagga Wagga Chamber of Commerce and the Wagga Wagga Ratepayers and Citizens Association, as well as concerned citizens and business owners. Representatives of the local fuel industry were invited to attend a meeting with members of the committee and address the issues around the high fuel price in Wagga Wagga. When I talk about the local fuel industry, by no means do we believe that the artificial inflation of fuel prices in Wagga Wagga is due to the small business proprietors who lease franchises and are licensed to run service stations owned by oil companies. They are certainly entitled to get every dollar that they can out of petrol pricing, but I believe this is well and truly out of their hands. These people are genuine operators of fuel retail outlets who basically have no control over what happens. That is quite clearly a problem for these people because they are inadvertently dragged into disrepute. It is not the small business owners or operators of fuel retail outlets who are the cause of this disparity in fuel prices.

The committee requested a meeting with the fuel industry to discuss possible reasons and get an understanding—a grip, a grasp—of why we might have such unreasonable petrol prices when all things have been taken into consideration, such as the distance tankers have to travel and the number of fuel outlets in Wagga Wagga. We weighed those factors up and measured them against other communities of around the same size and smaller than Wagga Wagga and still found we were up to 10c a litre worse off. Of course, it was very difficult for fuel representatives to attend this meeting—the two who attended were independents. They have to be congratulated for trying to face the onslaught of competing petrol prices which are to their detriment.

Most of these independents have been talking to me for a number of years. I clearly remember one man, Mr Bill McMaster from the Silvalite service station, who came to me in despair. He said that he could not buy fuel for what it was being sold for. He was buying fuel at terminal gate entry price, but that price was far higher than the price at which his competitors down the road were selling their fuel. He was in major difficulty. I remember another man who started up a fuel outlet, the Jolly Roger, in Wagga Wagga. He was discounting fuel and he had a line of people from everywhere. But it was not too long before he was no longer in business.

We now have a piece of legislation that primarily can strengthen negotiations and give some real teeth to determining why some of our communities across Australia are being discriminated against. As I said, it is not about the people who own the retail fuel outlets. This is far greater than them. They pay no role in price fixing. I believe that there are and have been orchestrated attempts to ensure that prices are inflated in the city of Wagga Wagga, because there is no other logical explanation. Due to the Treasurer’s actions in this area, we now have an ability to strengthen ACCC negotiations so that this issue can be investigated. An official complaint has been lodged by the Wagga Fuel Watchdog Committee with the ACCC, requesting that it investigate fuel prices in the city of Wagga Wagga. The Mayor of Wagga Wagga has also written to oil companies seeking an explanation as to why Wagga Wagga motorists are paying so much extra for their fuel. As the local member, I am concerned about these differences in price, because it impacts on all of the businesses. It is a catastrophe. As if fuel prices were not high enough, to levy Wagga Wagga people with even higher fuel prices is particularly unfair. As I said, the region suffers from unusually high fuel prices, but in Wagga Wagga they are absolutely extraordinary.

Higher fuel prices impact on local families and businesses and on expansion and employment opportunities. When you are looking at business expansion and employment opportunities, you are required to do quite a bit of travelling in and around regional areas—and fuel prices certainly have to be considered when a businesses is looking to expand. The costs associated with running a business are influenced always by higher fuel prices, which are an extreme hindrance to a business remaining competitive.

Unleaded petrol currently retails in Wagga Wagga for about 106.9c per litre. That is 10c per litre more expensive than other regional centres such as Orange, Bathurst and Albury. Wagga Wagga is located halfway between Sydney and Melbourne and is an ideal hub for a transport industry, yet the high pricing of fuel is impacting severely on local businesses involved in this industry. Wagga Wagga has 26 petrol stations—it has been said to me, ‘Maybe you haven’t got enough petrol stations to be competitive’—yet smaller centres around the city with less competition are able to offer far cheaper prices. This, as I said, is raising many questions as to how smaller centres with far less competition can charge less for fuel.

On 19 January 2005, the price of petrol in Wagga Wagga was 108.5c per litre, Dubbo was 98.7c per litre, Orange was 98.9c per litre, Albury—the price is coming up a little bit—was 102.6c per litre and Broken Hill was 108c per litre. We are now considered to be the same as Broken Hill. At the time, Wagga motorists were paying around 11.3c per litre more than the state average and about 7c per litre more than the regional New South Wales average for unleaded petrol.

According to the Daily Advertiser, when Woolworths entered the fuel market in 2002 they said that they would be able to sell fuel at lower prices, yet currently their fuel is no cheaper than other service stations in the city, unless customers use the discount docket available to them when they spend more than $30 at a Woolworths store.

The Trade Practices Act prohibits exclusionary and price-fixing provisions. This is where I am very keen to see some real action on these issues greatly affecting my community. The Dawson review found that the act was too narrow to allow newer forms of joint ventures. Under the amendments, clear cartel behaviour will continue to be prohibited outright, but genuine joint ventures will be examined according to a competition test. By supporting this bill, we will be supporting small business and ensuring the Trade Practices Act is not misused.

Just before I rose to speak in this debate, the member for Brand spoke of the exclusion of trade unions in the area of collective bargaining arrangements. In considering public benefit and detriment arising from proposed collective bargaining arrangements, the ACCC will have particular regard to the government’s intention that the collective-bargaining provisions not be used to pursue matters affecting employment relationships. The Trade Practices Act is for the promotion of competition and fair trading and provision of consumer protection, not for the pursuit of employee entitlements. This is further reinforced by an amendment to the bill which makes a notification invalid if it is lodged on behalf of a small business by a trade union, its officers or a person acting on the direction of the trade union.

The ALP have a very clear choice today. They can choose to support small business and the protection of the Trade Practices Act from misuse or they can choose to support their unions who, since 1995-96, have provided the ALP with over $40 million in donations. Far from being concerned about the exclusion of unions, we should be supporting the amendments contained in this bill and commending them to the House for everyone to support.