Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is exactly the same bill that was drawn up by the government. I emphasise to government members that we are talking about exactly the same document with the exception that, as did the Senate, we have deleted those clauses that made it easier for takeovers to occur in this country. I will say a few words on that in due course. The bill seeks to do what the government has failed to do, which is support the family businesses of Australia. It also seeks to avoid the very thing to which this government has succumbed by being held prisoner by those at the big end of town.

The present government, and the previous Hawke-Keating governments, have demonstrated through every one of their legislative and administrative initiatives that they see it as their responsibility to impair and undermine the ability of small family businesses to bargain with big business. My parents owned small businesses in North and western Queensland. My cousin just held a reunion for my family’s old department store in Charters Towers, where 200 former employees attended the celebrations, 25 years after the business was forced to close its doors to make way for the big corporate chains.

I am in a position to see when it comes to small business how the government is long on rhetoric but short on action. Let me give one classic example. The Fraser-Anthony government—a much maligned government, but the history books will be very kind to this government—introduced, amongst many other pieces of legislation, legislation restricting oil company ownership of petrol outlets throughout Australia to only 425. Whilst there were some 15,000 or 16,000 service station operators and outlets at the time, entities were restricted to owning only 400. I doubt whether there would be 400 now that are not directly or indirectly owned and controlled by the oil companies.

That shows the difference between the Fraser-Anthony government and the Hawke-Keating and current coalition governments and the way owner operated business and the competitive marketplace are treated. People on this side and that side of the House preach to us about competition—wonderful! We moved from having some 15,000 or 16,000 privately owned petrol station owners and outlets throughout Australia to now having virtually none. As far as finding ethanol outlets is concerned, we are flat out finding 200 independent operators left in this country.

I am in a position to see how the government is long on rhetoric but short on action when it comes to protecting small business from the predatory, untrammelled rapaciousness—to use the words of Hilaire Belloc—of big business.

Let me remind members of the history of this issue. Last year this House passed legislation to amend the Trade Practices Act. One of the provisions of that legislation made it easier for small businesses to combine and negotiate with big business. This provision is of importance to people ranging from sugar farmers to panel beaters to tow truck operators to newsagents to IGA store owners to pharmacists to petrol retailers—to name but a few.

This legislation will not, I must emphasize, make any qualitative change and will admittedly make only a very small quantitative change. The initiators, the inventors, the real entrepreneurial class in this country, may get some slight glimmer of hope. However, they might, somewhere in the future, see the re-creation of Australia as a land of opportunity, hope and excitement. It is very sad when people sing ‘wealth for toil’ in our national anthem and they burst out laughing. It really would be a joke to say that we have wealth for toil in this country. Instead, we have a land of predatory, mindless machine economic cannibals manned by the most intellectually barren, petty minded and self-interested people in our society. This is economic rationalism.

Another provision changed the rules for approving mergers, making mergers even easier than they are currently. Given that 98 per cent of mergers are already approved, people may well ask— (Time expired)

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