Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

We also believe there is an issue about durable consumer benefit, so in relation to the short-term issues that might see a savings in milk, if they are not going to be available in the longer term, what might superficially appear to be attractive may well lead to more problems for consumers down the track.

The member for Calare’s motion is important not only because it seeks to have the ACCC do what it can do with toolkit that is available to it, but hopefully because, through the Senate inquiry, it will highlight how that toolkit is deficient, some of the aspects relating to the misuse of market power and the need to satisfy a substantial market power test which sees a company able to raise prices without losing any business. That is an incredibly high threshold. Maybe the existence of market share might be an appropriate precondition. The issue is about not only the purpose for which a dominant player might be entering into a market or exercising its strength but also the effect of it.

The big players can say, ‘It wasn’t our intention to wipe out everybody in our supply chain. It just happened.’ This is not good for our country; this not is good for our economy. This is why we have 300,000 fewer people employed in small business since Labor was elected. We have seen the competition toolkit failing to meet the challenges of a contemporary market, and I am optimistic that through the prism of this totemic—(Time expired)

Debate interrupted.

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