Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Page is quite right to raise the issue of competition policy. It's a significant concern for the whole Australian community. But, when he talks about issues affecting regional areas, I must say we feel that pain too up in the far north: in my electorate areas of Darwin and Palmerstone, but also further out into the Territory's regional areas in the member for Lingiari's electorate. We see the ramifications of market concentration. We see the effect of a lack of competition and higher retail margins that often do lead to significantly higher fuel prices and, in some cases, as the member for Page mentioned, outright gouging by shameless operators. I've seen it myself. When you're down south and you get back home to the Territory, you are paying 20c to 30c a litre more for fuel. This affects Territorians; it affects Australians around this country every day. It also impacts on businesses.

I do understand why some in the Territory, including in my electorate, and in other areas of regional Australia allege collusion. I understand that. I understand why the member for Page is so frustrated, as there have been many inquiries and many reports into this. I will offer that I think part of the problem is that resources have been stripped out of the ACCC, and that's a problem, but I do also want to provide some information about the way forward.

Currently, small businesses are less likely to take up private litigation against anticompetitive behaviour. This is because big businesses have deep pockets, obviously, and armies of lawyers, so the risk of a small business being bankrupted by legal fees is a significant disincentive to taking action against anticompetitive conduct. Labor's small business access to justice policy will restore the balance between small and large businesses by letting a small business request a 'no adverse costs order' early in a private court case regarding these abuses of market power. If the judge decides the case has merit, the small business will not have to pay the big business' legal costs.

Of course, we can't really rely solely on private litigation. The government should also back Labor's comprehensive suite of measures to create a stronger competition watchdog with the ACCC. Although the government has matched Labor's commitment to increase penalties under the Australian Consumer Law, it should also adopt our policy to adopt higher penalties for anticompetitive behaviour. It should match our commitment to effectively double the ACCC's litigation budget—an increase of $24.5 million a year—so that the watchdog can take on more cases of anticompetitive conduct to court.

In my electorate, and I'm sure in other regional members' electorates, we hear again and again: 'The ACCC is a toothless tiger. They can't do anything.' Yes, the ACCC is a toothless tiger if it hasn't got any teeth. If we're to put some resources back into the ACCC, it will have more teeth and it will be able to bite and cause the pain that we need to see in some of these unscrupulous companies that are making life difficult, particularly for people in regional areas. Labor has committed to giving the watchdog a completely independent market studies function so that it can explore public interest issues such as pricing discrepancies and increased market concentration. This does stand—and I understand why the member for Page is so frustrated—in stark contrast to the current government's position of sitting on its hands until the competition issue is at crisis levels and the minister needs to request a market study.

On this side, we have committed to ensuring courts apply for higher penalties for conduct that targets disadvantaged Australians and to prioritise such investigations. Many of these are in regional and rural areas. In addition, Labor is driving a better deal to put more money back into the pockets of car owners and to give independent repairers a boost. That's part of a suite of things that we are doing on this side to help people in regional and rural Australia.

See this speech in context