Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I am never far away, Minister. To follow on from the astute line of questioning of my colleague Senator Fisher, Minister, I would appreciate it if you could cite other examples where a wholesale service is defined on the product rather than on the nature of the fact that a wholesaler is usually a wholesaler who sells to a retailer. As I said in comments earlier, the general understanding that I think any layman or laywoman would have about the definition of wholesale is that wholesale, and wholesaling, is seen to be an instance of onselling a product to a retailer. You seem to be wanting to define wholesaling activity not as the onselling of a product but by the product that is being sold. These are markedly different definitional approaches. They are vastly different definitional approaches. What the coalition’s amendments are seeking to do is to take a very routine, standard, traditional approach to a wholesale-only service and define it by virtue of the fact that it be onsold. There is nothing terribly radical or new in that. It would be quite commonsensical and logical, I think, to anyone who cared to listen and consider the debate. What is perplexing in the debate is why you are attempting to define a wholesale service not by the sales actions of the company but by the product that is being offered. Why do you want to create a totally different understanding of wholesale services for NBN Co. compared with what anybody else would define to be a wholesale service activity?