Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will not be supporting the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006 on the third reading, for the reason that I articulated before. I believe that this bill facilitates the oil majors’ interests against the interests of the independents. I am not prepared to take the government’s word that it will deal with the tightening of the Trade Practices Act or the Dawson reforms before 1 March next year. Whilst I respect Senator Minchin’s undertaking that he will personally do all he can in the government, I am afraid that does not hold very much water, because the Treasurer will determine it and the members of the government in the Senate will do as they are told from cabinet direction. I have seen enough of this government to know that passing one thing on a lick and a promise that another thing will come at a different time when so much is at stake is just not something I am prepared to support.

I want to make sure that rural and regional Australia continues to be serviced by having appropriate levels of retail outlets. The only way that that is going to occur is by supporting the independents in the marketplace and I am not persuaded that that is going to occur. I am not persuaded that a delay is going to deliver the outcomes that we should have had from a package. Senator Murray was quite right—we should have dealt with these either as cognate bills or sequentially. That has not occurred. Obviously, the government has the numbers to do as it likes, but people out there in rural and regional Australia need to understand what this means for them.

On the north-west coast of Tasmania in a small place called Wesley Vale there used to be a small service station. It closed down. People in that whole district now have to go to East Devonport, Latrobe, Shearwater or Port Sorell to buy their fuel. That means that they are also purchasing other goods in those centres that they used to purchase locally, which is undermining the viability of their local store. That is the story across Australia and I am not persuaded that we are going to see anything other than acceleration of that, given what representatives of the independents have said when they have given evidence on this matter. That is why the Greens will be opposing the third reading. If indeed the government does deliver by 1 March next year on the Dawson reforms and on tightening the Trade Practices Act, that will be a good thing—although it still will not go far enough—and we will welcome that if it occurs. But after the performance of the government on so many of its undertakings that have not come to fruition, I am not prepared to take just a promise that a government minister will do all he can in cabinet. That is an insufficient undertaking for the Greens.