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

I have some concluding remarks on these amendments. We are moving to a situation where we have two players that are going to dominate petrol retailing in Australia. I do not know anyone who thinks that is a great idea. In removing regulations that made sense in their day but do not make sense today, we should be replacing them with regulations that do all we can to make sure we have more competition, not less. I understand that the intention of these amendments is right and honourable—and maybe some of the content is not—but how do you get a government to sit down and genuinely look at the interests of Australia and have a fair dinkum debate and tussle about whether 25 per cent is right or whether 20 per cent is right or whether it should be based on volume or on sites? But to stand by and do nothing and allow the independents to be squeezed out of the market—and that is what we are talking about here—rather than trying to allow real competition to happen, is ludicrous. We are in danger of going down the path we went down with groceries in Australia—having two players dominating the whole grocery market and also dominating petrol retailing when we have an opportunity to stop it. It is absolutely crazy.

Question negatived.

I move Family First amendment (4) on sheet 4928 revised:

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

5  After subsection 95Z(1)

Insert:

Offence: failure to negotiate on price, terms of conditions of supply