Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

Given Senator Xenophon invited me to make some comments, I thought I should briefly restate our position on this. Senator Xenophon, you and I have spent some quality hours in the Senate Economics References Committee together, particularly on supermarket issues. I was not a member of the committee that reported that. I would state, though, that our commitment to the root-and-branch review of the act encompasses the issue you raise. We do not necessarily have a position on it. We think that, two decades on, it is time to look at it. The events that are necessary to trigger an offence are something we are keen to look at. However, my personal view on the question about whether something should result in a greater number of court cases is that a good act does not necessarily lead to a higher number of court cases because it has an educative function that means that behaviour changes, which does not necessarily lead to a higher number of court cases.