George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

So, Senator Murray, to the extent to which you say, ‘That’s just not going to happen,’ with all due respect to you, you are wrong. And I am sure Senator Murray will be delighted to see the section 46 reform which we have, from our different points of view, worked on through the Senate committee process come to fruition. It may not be what you wanted, Senator Murray; it may be closer to my model—I hope it is. But I hope that you will take some satisfaction from the fruition of that process.

Let me finish on this note. Let the Dawson bill now proceed. Let the amendments that the government has made to the authorisation of mergers provisions be passed this evening by the Senate. I think that the proposal to give the primacy to the Australian Competition Tribunal, rather than, in the first instance, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is a good proposal. It is a good proposal because—and, Senator Murray, what you neglected to say in your contribution was that—the current arrangement, whereby a party can seek a clearance under section 88(9) of the Trade Practices Act from the ACCC, lacks transparency. It is an informal process. It lacks transparency. If a party is dissatisfied with that outcome, it can then make an application to the Australian Competition Tribunal.

How much better, and how much less wasteful, to have a transparent process, so that if there is to be a dispute about a merger authorisation it be before the Australian Competition Tribunal, where it would have ended up in a disputed case anyway. And how much better to have—as the amendments we have before us tonight propose—the ACCC as a full party before the Australian Competition Tribunal, able to make submissions, so that there can be a full, contested, transparent, inter partes hearing of a controversial merger proposal. That is a better way of going about it. It has the dual virtues of efficiency and transparency. And I would have thought, Senator Murray, particularly having regard to many things you have said in related contexts about transparency, that that would have been something you would have welcomed.

Be that as it may, those are the virtues of the reforms to the merger authorisation proposal. But that is not what small business is delighted about tonight. Small business is delighted that—after an unwanted delay as a result of a stunt we saw in this chamber last year—collective bargaining, No. 1 on their wish list, will be delivered. It will be delivered, in fidelity to the Dawson recommendations—consistent with your own recommendations in the Senate committee, Senator Murray, and something to which this government has been committed for a very long while.