Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I notice a number of stakeholders said that they were disappointed with the legislation—obviously, there are criticisms in different areas—simply about the fact that it did not meet the spirit of the government's promise, going to the last election, that they would extend to small business these contract terms from consumer law. For example, the Australian Newsagents Federation said:

The majority of Newsagents have approx. 6-8 main multi-year contracts …

They also talk about their lease agreements being long-term lease agreements and say:

These contracts will in most cases be excluded by the current bill thresholds. These are the contracts that can often lack equity, that cause small business owners stress, and that can also restrict their control to manage their own businesses.

These are important submissions that are made by key stakeholders in this debate. They also raise concerns about a number of issues in relation to what constitutes the up-front price payable in the UCT Bill and they make some suggestions there about amendments to the legislation that we have here in front of us. They also talk about exempting the up-front price of the goods and services and exempting the main subject matter of the contract. There are a number of exemptions that we could have sought today to finetune this bill. I accept the minister's assertion that these are things that could be reviewed in two years time or in five years time. But I think this issue, where we could simply extend the transaction value threshold from $100,000 to $300,000, will not do anything to impact the legislation. It should not have any issues across the small business community. I notice a number of groups that represent larger businesses put up criticisms of this bill; they do not want to see it happen. I think this is a very simple one for us to do here today. It would be very disappointing if the government did not show any flexibility in this regard. These are, I think, very good amendments that we can say, now, with confidence will capture 95 per cent of small businesses in this country, which is much more in the spirit of what the government promised when it promised this legislation going into the last election. It would be an easy thing to do.

I think it is threatening the Senate, as you have just done, Senator Cormann, to say that it will be on our heads if this legislation gets rejected by the upper house in this country, when actually what we are asking to do is very simple and would improve the bill, and it probably has majority support in the Senate. I would ask what particular issue you have with extending this to $300,000. In asking you that, I would like you to consider another thing that the Australian Newsagents Federation said in their submission:

… in the exposure draft explanatory material ‘context of amendments’ 1.7, it argued a rationale that higher value thresholds should be excluded on the basis that, ‘‘it may be reasonable to expect that they (small businesses) undertake appropriate due diligence (such as seeking legal advice)’, and that, ‘the onus on small businesses to undertake due diligence when entering into high-value contracts’ should be maintained. It is overly simplistic and ingenuous to assume that by taking legal advice and doing due diligence that a small business operator will necessarily be able to inject equity and fairness into their contracting relationships with several multinational organisations who they contract with, or to easily walk away without losing their business, particularly on renewal. This is unrealistic when the more powerful party may use their market power to be particularly inflexible.

They do state in their submission that the majority of their standard form contracts are for over $100,000, yet under your definition they constitute small businesses, with newsagents being employers of just a few people. So why is this an example here, where essentially your legislation is take it or leave it? Can you address those concerns?