Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

This is the conclusion of the debate over the amendments to the Trade Practices Act as recommended by Sir Daryl Dawson when he did a review of the competition provisions of the Trade Practices Act. He recommended that it be made more transparent, that provisions be modernised and that it be more applicable in relation to small business collective bargaining and merger provisions. This amendment bill was initially introduced to the parliament a year ago. It was passed by this House, the Senate added amendments to it, which were unacceptable to the House, and essentially it has been frustrated for 12 months.

I brought the bill back into this House two days ago and we had a very thorough debate then, where the House decided that it would not accept the Senate’s amendments and the House improved a number of aspects of the bill. As I explained to the House on that occasion, the areas where the House improved aspects of the bill were in relation to authorisations, which will now go to the Australian Competition Tribunal. The House put amendments in place which will allow the ACCC to be heard in relation to those applications, to call evidence, to examine and cross-examine and to make submissions.

When the bill with those amendments went back to the Senate, the Senate did not insist on its original amendments. It accepted all of the amendments that the House put in here in debate a couple of days ago and it made only one final amendment. That amendment was moved by Senator Fielding, who moved that, where a formal merger application is made, the time limit which gave the ACCC 40 business days to consider it could be extended for another 20 business days upon the application of the commission itself. So that is the sole amendment that is now before the House—whether or not that time limit of 40 days is extended by another 20 and therefore is a maximum of 60 days.

I do not believe either side of the House would be opposed to that amendment. I believe that even the opposition, judging from its intervention in the debate, will support it, and of course the government will support it because the government voted for it, or at least indicated its support for it, when the matter was before the Senate. So, after a long legislative history, the good news is that this amendment has now passed the Senate and we bring it back for final endorsement here in the House.

What this bill will do is make it easier for small business to collectively bargain. Small business will be able to move to collective bargaining without authorisation, just with notification, unless the ACCC wants to contest it. It will therefore be able to go into negotiations with suppliers that will improve its position. All of the small business organisations of Australia that have had something to say about this in the last couple of days have supported the passage of this bill with the government amendments and have pleaded with the parties in the Senate to let it through.

Can I indicate that the breaking of this impasse would not have been possible without the good work of Senator Ron Boswell, who worked so hard and so well in relation to this matter in the Senate. I also pay tribute to Senator Fielding, whose amendments we are deliberating on here today and who was also a very big part of negotiating the passage of this bill. Can I thank the Minister for Small Business and Tourism for the work that she has done. This is a great day for small business. It is a great day to get this improvement through for the Trade Practices Act. I hope all sides of parliament will support these amendments and get this into law for the benefit of the small businesses of Australia.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer got one thing right, and that is that the opposition will be supporting the amendment put forward by Senator Fielding, as we did in the other place. We think it is a very minor improvement to the bill. But I can announce that we will still be opposing this bill because it is a flawed bill. It is a flawed bill because, although it gives something to small business, it taketh something away.

The Treasurer, for the last 12 months, at least, has been holding a big gun to the head of small business in this country. He says, ‘You can have a new collective bargaining regime.’ I should remind the House that we have always had a collective bargaining regime. This is just a measure to simplify that regime, but it is a measure to simplify a regime that we support. It has always been there. What the Treasurer has said consistently is this: ‘You can have your new collective bargaining regime, but only if you support our weakened merger proposals.’ Weaker merger proposals! That is, of course, a measure which is detrimental to the interests of small business and consumers in this country.

Unfortunately, there is another way in which the Treasurer is holding a gun to the head of small business. Having acknowledged and identified that there is a real problem with section 46 of the Trade Practices Act, particularly in terms of the ability of the ACCC to secure a prosecution for predatory pricing, and having put forward some suggested proposals to fix that problem, the Treasurer has said consistently that small business cannot have those important trade practices reforms until he gets his merger proposals through this parliament. In other words, he says, ‘You can have collective bargaining in new streamlined proposals and you can have some reforms in section 46 of the Trade Practices Act, but not until the BCA and big companies in this country get changes to the mergers law that make it easier for them to consolidate’—which of course is a result which would be bad for small business.

We proposed, alternatively, a win-win-win for small business: effective changes to section 46 to strengthen that part of the Trade Practices Act; a new streamlined collective bargaining provision, which is good for small business; and, of course, maintaining the current strength we have in mergers law in this country, which is beneficial to small business. So that would be a win-win-win from the opposition. The government’s perspective was that the small business community could have something but only if it agreed to something which was detrimental to its interests—and that was the weakening of the mergers law.

We put forward some very reasonable amendments to the authorisation processes or changes the government put forward. It would have kept the ACCC—the appropriate economic expert body best placed to determine whether any consolidation, even though it may lead to a substantially lessening of competition might, in any case, be in the public interest—in the game. Instead, the government has sidelined the ACCC and in future will allow applicants for merger proposals to go straight to the Australian Competition Tribunal.

Not only that—and I am going specifically to the nature of this particular amendment—but the government is changing the clearance provisions under section 50 of the Trade Practices Act. In future, an applicant proposing a merger, and going to the ACCC, will not go informally—as it has always done—but go for a formal application. This is not a subtle change in the law, it gives the merger applicants a new appeal right and it severely constrains the ACCC.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Quite wrong.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why does it constrain the ACCC? Because the Treasurer is providing the ACCC with a very limited time period on which to make its assessment—I think it was 30 or 40 business days. The Fielding amendment extends that period.

There is one thing I would like to ask the Treasurer this afternoon about his changes, as he interjects. I ask the Treasurer whether or not an ACCC clearance for a merger proposal can be revoked under the new law, as it was always able to be revoked under the old law. In other words, if the ACCC clears a merger proposal and down the track the ACCC comes to the conclusion that the merger outcome is now having a detrimental impact on the Australian economy, can the ACCC revoke that formal clearance approval? (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendments be agreed to.

Question agreed to, Mr Katter dissenting.