Senator COOK(4.02 p.m.) —I want to make a short but hopefully telling statement about this document. It is said by many in philosophy that only the winners write history. Indeed, since the coalition won the last election, they have been attempting to rewrite the history of the saga of small business in Australia.

The report brought down in the House of Representatives and in the Senate just a moment ago is a report by the government responding to a House of Representatives committee inquiring into aspects of small business trading, particularly into those aspects relating to tenants of shopping malls who are at the mercy of the owners of those shopping malls—aspects such as rent, circumstances of tenancy and all of the other issues associated with that.

The report deals with the parlous position of franchisees—that is, small franchised businesses that buy a franchise from a major corporation and then trade under that corporation's name, logo and product. It is a small business sector which is the most litigated in the Australian business area. The report deals with all of those things.

The opposition welcomes the government's response to this report in the main. We welcome it with a qualification. We do not know how overjoyed we should be until we see the actual legislation that gives voice in practical legislative terms to the promises that the government makes in its statement. With the qualification that we expect that the heady rhetoric of the government's statement will be translated into cold, black-letter law which really does mean something, we have to say that what the government has done on balance in responding to Finding a balance: towards fair trading in Australia—that is the title of the House of Representatives' report—is by and large welcomed by us. Of course, there are deficiencies, and I will turn to those in a moment.

A fair bit of the statement that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, Mr Reith, has tabled in the House begins with a long lambasting of the record of the Labor government. As I have said, if winners write history, this is an effort by Mr Reith to rewrite the facts of the case. The truth is that small business recognises that the previous Labor government was the first federal government of Australia to appoint a small business minister—David Beddall. He took a number of innovative steps to lift the profile of small business and to impart into the legislative considerations of both the cabinet and the parliament steps to protect the interests of the small business community, and he introduced a number of inquiries from which government action flowed.

This report, Finding a balance, which the government is responding to today, picks up 90 per cent of the recommendations of a report that the Labor Party brought down when in office in 1995, the Better business report. The government, in now responding to the later report—it became available late last year—is two years off the pace. Had it not obstructed us for political and election purposes in 1995, many of the measures that are now being proposed would have been in place and small business would have benefited from them.

That is not a reason to not recognise and give credit to the changes that the government proposes to make. It is, though, reason to say quite clearly on the record that these could have been done sooner had the government not, for political and electoral purposes in 1995 and early in 1996, obstructed the course of the then government when it brought them down.

The very inquiry that the government is now responding to—the inquiry which brought down the report Finding a balance and which was well conducted, with a government majority, though all party members were on it—arose because the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, had a private member's bill before the chamber in the other place and would have proceeded with it were the government ever to give him leave to do so. They did not. He was not able to proceed. To cover the political embarrassment of preventing the Kim Beazley fair trading, small business bill coming on, the government then created this inquiry.

I think it is important to get the sequence of events on the table. The Beazley private member's bill stimulated the government to political action in setting up their inquiry which they now reply to and which we now welcome many of the findings from. That said, the response by the government is not an adequate response in the all round sense. Let me now turn to the merit of some of the recommendations.

The Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business has foreshadowed a number of, I think, important changes, but the government has not at all delivered in the area of retail tenancy. Dispute resolution over retail tenancies, the establishment of retail lease tribunals, security of tenure for retail lessees in shopping malls in particular, lease assignments, disclosure of rents, a review of rent proceedings, outgoings and promotions, leases and disclosure statements, the mix of tenancies, and the redevelopment and relocation of tenants were all subject to recommendations in the report, and all of those have been ignored by the government in its response to the report. This leaves as a running sore justice for small tenants in major shopping complexes in Australia—an area of major concern and an area of major outcry.

On a broader note, this area of business is a growth area. The tendency for Australian consumers is to choose the more congenial shopping facilities of a large mall and to buy through the major retail outlets in that mall and the boutique stores that also provide the colour and the variation of retailing that is available there. The corner store is increasingly a thing of the past, but for small retailers who seek lease holdings in the major mall they are increasingly finding that the big end of town—big business in Australia—squeezes them and either forces them to the margin, pushes them out of business or forces them to be uncompetitive in pushing up their prices to consumers.

This is an area which requires a government to make a decision at the end of the day as to whose side they are on. Are they on the side of increasing competition, of increasing the opportunities in business for small entrepreneurs, or are they lined up with the big end of town which takes the view that there is somehow a fair negotiating situation between someone who owns the premises and the mall and someone who seeks to be a tenant in it?

Are they of the view that the negotiations between the owner and the rent seeker—the small boutique shopkeeper—is somehow fair and conducted between equal partners? Well, it is not. That is what the recommendations of the House of Representatives committee found—a committee with a majority of government backbenchers on it. The government has not proceeded to accept those recommendations. The opposition think they ought to have done so. To do so would have improved the access to justice of small shopkeepers.

In the government's response to this report they have announced that they are setting up the franchising policy council. It is an interesting recommendation. We endorse it, but we draw attention to the fact that government funding for a franchising policy council was cut out in the 1996 budget. That is, funds of $2 million were removed. We had a council in name with no funding to give effect to their responsibilities.

What the government then did was flirt with the idea of inviting the franchisors—that is, the head owners of the franchise—to set up a council which the government would recognise, as if that end of the bargaining equation could represent the interests of the franchisees—the people whom they contracted to—and could therefore represent their interests.

The quickest and fastest growing area of litigation is between the franchisors and the franchisees in the small business area. Increasingly, a business in Australia will be conducted as it is in the United States and Europe through franchises. To get the law right in this area means to protect those who are the small end of the equation—the franchisees—and who are often at the mercy of unscrupulous dealers who own the franchise.

To set up a council that will remove the high cost of law and access to justice for franchisees is a moderate step. It should be taken; it was taken. Funds were bled away under the previous budget. It will be taken now. That is a good thing. I wish it had been done sooner. (Time expired)