Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Family First moves together:

(1)    Schedule 2, page 4 (line 2), omit “amendment”, substitute “amendments”.

(2)   Schedule 2, page 4 (after line 13), at the end of the Schedule, add:

Trade Practices Act 1974

In themselves, items (1) and (2) form one package, which relates to collective bargaining for independent fuel retailers. It is important for independents to be able to get together and bargain collectively. They can apply to bargain collectively at the moment, but we are talking here about streamlining the process.

Just recently the Senate broadly debated the issue of bargaining collectively for all industries. For some reason, the Senate agreed that collective bargaining for individual small businesses was important but knocked back an issue tied to mergers and acquisitions. Recently, the Senate considered a trade practices bill that looked at collective bargaining and agreed that it was important for small business. This bill, the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006, if it goes through tonight, will make it even harder for independents, as the big players will take an increasingly greater market share. One of the ways that small businesses and independents can get better pricing is through collectively bargaining, and Family First is proposing what the Senate has already agreed to previously regarding changes to the Trade Practices Act. I ask here that the Senate agree that, if this bill goes ahead, it also, at the same time, strengthens and makes it easier for small business, the independents, to get together to collectively bargain.

The issue here is that it is very time consuming for independents to get together at the moment and there is no guarantee that they will receive permission to get together to collectively bargain. Realistically, this is an important issue, especially with this bill that will remove any restrictions on the big end of town. Chair, could I just ask a question here? The sort of behaviour that is occurring on the right-hand side of the chamber is appalling.