Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Right back in August this year, when Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership was just a gleam in his eye and he was busy doing the numbers, we had a small business minister who actually cared about small business. Way back then, on 25 August this year, the Business Council of Australia sent a letter to cabinet ministers warning of the allegedly dire consequences to this country if section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act were amended to include an effects test. This document is an extraordinary letter. It contains a series of warnings about those dire consequences of introducing an effects test, and there are a couple of absolutely classic arguments that I wanted to raise in the Senate this evening so the Australian people can have the opportunity to understand how the Business Council of Australia tries to manipulate political opinion in this country.

This letter, under a subheading of 'Adverse impact on the economy overall', says, 'The changes to section 46 governing the misuse of market power as proposed in the Harper review risk'—and then there are a number of dot points. I want to go the second dot point. One of the risks that the Business Council of Australia has identified is 'lowering investment and productivity growth, as companies will be hesitant to innovate or grow because of uncertainty about the possible negative impact on their competitors'. Can you imagine it—the captains of industry sitting around Australian boardrooms saying, 'We're not going to innovate because we're worried that our innovation might have a negative impact on our competitors.' What an extraordinary argument! I would suggest that in the main, if corporations thought they could get away with it, they would trample one another in order to deliver negative impact on their competitors, and yet the Business Council of Australia wants the recipients of this letter—who were, by the way, I understand, every minister in the cabinet at the time—to believe that they are actually concerned about negative impacts.

But potentially more outrageous is the claim that major new innovations like the iPhone would be at risk. Fancy that: if we were to deliver a level playing field for all business and improve the framework for competition in this country, we would not be able to come up with the next iPhone! The arguments in this letter are, frankly, ridiculous, and yet somehow this letter played a role—and potentially has still played a role under Malcolm Turnbull's leadership—in convincing the government not to support an effects test as recommended in recommendation 30 of the review conducted by Professor Harper.

Madam Acting Deputy President, I seek leave of the Senate to table this letter.

Leave not granted.

Leave has not been granted? Who denied that?