Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

He is talking about volume. He needs to turn his volume up if I am to hear it—and I should not listen to it, should I, Chair? Thank you very much. The fact is that we in this country have lost track of the fact that parliament is here to look after small business. Parliament is here to look after those people who are prepared to set up shop in small towns to sell essential services. Parliament is here to look after people who are prepared to go with less—because that is what it means in the bush, in terms of income—to be part of a community, to service that community and, as result of that, as Senator Joyce was saying, to keep other entities and communities going. But the big parties have over a number of decades now simply pandered to the market as a whole range of small businesses got squeezed out.

I can remember being in the Tasmanian parliament when there was a perfectly good roster system for petrol stations in Tasmania—and Senator O’Brien will remember this. The local petrol stations in Hobart, Ulverstone and Launceston were on a roster system. This meant that family proprietors could get home to their families on weekends. Where you could go to get your petrol was in the daily newspaper, so you drove to one of the on-roster stations. And it worked well. The oil companies did not like that, I can tell you. They wanted a seven days a week grind for the business. They got their way. The legislation was brought in, this system was knocked out and now the big oil companies are serially buying up the independents, often simply to close them down as nothing else replaces them, and aggregating their petrol outlets.

In an age where we are concerned about the consumption of fossil fuels because of the huge impact it is having on the environment, we will end up with people from Tambo driving to the next biggest town, Longreach, to get their petrol. Either that or they will have to store it back in Tambo. The same applies to small towns. It is in the interests of these big petrol corporations; efficiency and profit is what they are about. So they close down the small businesses and make the public come to the centralised place. And of course when you get there you have groceries and a whole range of other goods, which deny other small businesses the ability to survive.

You can mischievously call this ‘Soviet command’ economy and ‘centralised’ economy. But that is what the big oil companies are into: centralising the economy in downtown Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and so on, with the profits going there, and everybody in the regions having to do what they say. I agree with Senator Joyce on this because I think it is this parliament’s responsibility to look after the people of this country and not leave it to the Stock Exchange and the big oil companies, who are preponderantly foreign owned.

A good debate is being had here, but the lowest common denominator would be to say: ‘Senator Joyce, your legislation’s got holes in it. There’s going to be difficulty if that is passed as is.’ That is not the argument. The argument being used here is that Labor and the government do not like the sentiment that Senator Joyce has brought into this chamber.

If there are problems with the wording of this amendment they can fix that. That is not the argument; that is a spurious argument. The reality is that they do not like the sentiment that 25 per cent of the product should be kept for independents. Whether you fix the figure at 20 per cent or 30 per cent or even 10 per cent, there should be some line. I have heard the argument that, if enough independents get out so that there are not enough to supply 25 per cent, woe betide us. Do we not have the facility to come in here and look at that situation and debate it again? Of course we do.

You do not legislate by buying in all the possible problems in the future. Parliament legislates for now, with the ability to come back and fix up things if new contingencies arise. So the sentiment is right. It is an honourable sentiment. It is a sentiment that is good for the people of Australia, particularly for regional Australia, and it deserves to get more support.