1998-07-033817SENATE484501998-07-03The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Margaret Reid) took the chair at 9.30 a.m., and read prayers.Bills4845r513Billsr5144845Consideration resumed from 2 July.TELEVISION BROADCASTING SERVICES (DIGITAL CONVERSION) BILL 1998The bill.UNKNOWNThe CHAIRThe CHAIR—The committee is considering the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Bill 1998 as amended, and amendments 11 to 13 on sheet 1062 moved by Senator Bourne. The question is that the amendments be agreed to.09:31:004845Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—We are discussing whether we should change `exceptional circumstances' to `unforeseen circumstances' if the national broadcasters cannot begin digital transmission when they are supposed to. There are two things that worry me about this and I would like the minister's assurance on both of them. If I can get that assurance, I will not be so worried. Firstly, if by chance some mythical government did not fund one or other of the national broadcasters properly to start digital transmission—for example, they just did not have the money to do it because they did not get it out of appropriations—would that be seen as exceptional or would they just have to give back the spectrum, despite the fact that the next government, after the one which did not fund them, may well fund them properly? Would that be seen as exceptional?4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—You are describing a Liberal and Labor government there.4J4Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNE—I am considering a Democrat government, which would fund the ABC brilliantly for digital broadcasting. The point is that, if the ABC or SBS are not properly funded to be able to start digital broadcasting, would that be seen as an exceptional circumstance? Would they will still have the opportunity to have that spectrum or could it be sold off to people such as datacasters?09:33:004845Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The short answer is that, if they did not get any funding, that would clearly be an exceptional circumstance.09:33:004845Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—In view of that succinct commitment from the government, we support the government's amendment.VJ4WATSONSenator Watson—Good on you, Schachty!4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—What is wrong?VJ4WATSONSenator Watson—Supporting the government's amendment.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—Senator Watson should remember that I have been extraordinarily cooperative with the government over this bill, and the last four or five hours of discussion in the committee stage of this bill have proved it.If any government was mad enough to cut the funding and then use that as an excuse to take the megahertz back from the national broadcaster, whatever one may think about those individual national broadcasters, the public debate that would ensue would be very vigorous, widespread and something that a government would take an enormous amount of bruising on, and it would be forced to capitulate. I do not think there is any doubt about that, because it would be an unheard of procedure to say to a national broadcaster, `We are taking your spectrum off you and we have cut the money off you.' It would never happen with a Labor government. I hope a Liberal government is dopey enough to try, because the political damage it would incur would be massive.09:35:004845Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—I thank the minister for that answer. I should mention to Senator Schacht—and I am sure he knows—that the ABC in particular has been given only $20.8 million when it needs $108 million for stage 1 of digitisation, and that has been accepted by an independent study. I hope that the minister's answer means that the ABC will be given the rest of that $108 million in the very near future for stage 1 of digitisation. I thank the minister for his answer that he believes that that would be exceptional, and that does allay my fears a great deal.The other circumstance that does not worry me as much, but does worry me somewhat, is that, if something were to happen to the national transmission network in private or public hands, and the national broadcasters were unable to begin digital broadcasting perhaps for weeks beyond the point when they were supposed to, would that be seen as exceptional as well? If it is, with those two circumstances covered, I would not bother proceeding with the amendment.09:36:004846Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The underlying principle is that you would only contemplate resumption of the spectrum where the players themselves were at fault. It follows by definition that, if the NTA or the government itself does not fund them, it is not their fault. So you would have no basis for asking for it to be handed back. It is only when you get into these degrees where they say, `Yes, technically we have not been able to roll it out, but there have been exceptional circumstances,' and you say, `If that is the case, we will allow you to keep going.'09:37:004846Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—With respect to any exceptional or unforeseen circumstances applying to the ABC, it seems that the construct of this clause is ostensibly about providing an opportunity for an out, if you like, if the ABC finds itself in the position of being uncompetitive or unfair.On that point I would like to raise a concern I have with the minister about the way the ABC could possibly compete, particularly in the potential area of datacasting. Perhaps an extraordinary circumstance could be described as the advent of other broadcasters who are recipients of seven megahertz of spectrum being in a position, as we know they are, to provide a datacasting service concurrently with their broadcasting services now; yet the ABC does not have that infrastructure or capacity to invest in partnerships with other providers of infrastructure to establish themselves as a provider of a datacasting service now prior to the completion of the year 2000 review.Firstly, if the ABC found themselves in that situation, would that constitute an exceptional circumstance? Secondly, it raises a broader issue of the actual exclusion of the ABC in being able to provide a datacasting service in the intervening period when we know that other broadcasters, particularly Channel 7 and Channel 9, are in a position to in fact do that right now.09:39:004846Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—Datacasting is in some respects an optional extra. That is why the Labor Party at one stage wanted to put it all off and take it out of the bill. The core element of it is that we want to see a digital rollout and the broadcasters getting into the HDTV business. This clause is saying that, `If we give you the spectrum on the basis that you will roll it out, and then you welsh on the deal, if there is no good reason for that, we want to recall it.'Exceptional circumstances is only concerned with the extent to which the broadcasters, both national and commercial, honour their obligations to move in that direction in a broadcasting sense. As far as datacasting is concerned, the ABC and SBS can get into datacasting if they want to. They will be treated in the same way as the commercials. They will be entitled to charge for using their spectrum for those purposes, but otherwise it is their call.09:40:004846Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—Minister, in some of your comments yesterday, you described the review that is going to take place as being quite narrow in its relevancy. Can you comment on the circumstance that could arise where the excess digital spectrum that may potentially be available for datacasting is actually not required by the broadcaster because they are providing those services elsewhere and whether or not the retention of that digital spectrum for those purposes over and above the datacasting service they are providing will be possible?09:41:004847Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The broadcasters will be using only whatever is left over from their seven megahertz after they have provided broadcasting facilities. If they start off at standard definition and move towards a degree of digital—I forget the numbers now, but let us say they go to 625 on the way to 1080—they will have maybe a third left for datacasting. If they go to full HDTV, they may not have much left over, but I think they would still have a bit left over for datacasting. If you are talking about the excess within their seven megahertz, it is a matter for them, subject to meeting the progressive time lines in terms of the transmission rollout for broadcasting. But if you are talking about the balance of the spectrum that is otherwise available for datacasters, as we have said a number of times, we believe that there is more than sufficient for any of the new entrants and there may indeed be some surplus spectrum. But that is not a problem; that is just an abundance of spectrum which can be used for other purposes entirely, if that turns out to be the case.09:42:004847Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—Minister, with respect to future datacasting services, do you see it as being within your role to ensure that the ABC suffers no competitive disadvantage in presenting that first interface with the viewer for a datacasting service or do you think that is something that should just fall within the determination of the market, so to speak?09:43:004847Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The essential principle is a level playing field, so no-one is trying to discriminate for or against commercials or national broadcasters. If, say, the ABC decides that it is not really interested in datacasting and that it wants to go to full high definition ahead of the commercials, then it would do that. If it simply met the progressive timetable, then over time it would pro gressively have less spectrum available for the purpose. But it would, nonetheless, have surplus spectrum which could be used for commercial purposes. It could enter into sharing arrangements with other datacasters, and it would be in the business of earning revenue from that source and, at the same time, be subject to an across-the-board revenue collection mechanism from the Commonwealth.09:44:004847Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—Pursuing that point, if it is not within the capacity of the ABC to in fact embark upon the same sorts of realignments and partnerships with the providers of other bandwidth infrastructure, what special consideration, if you like, is the government prepared to consider?4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—Give them more money.7G6Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY—I will acknowledge Senator Schacht's point—it is about more money. It is about the government being the source of funding for the ABC and ensuring that the ABC does have the resources to present its datacasting product to the community in a way that is not subservient to other datacasting services which, under the current time frames, will be long established.09:45:004847Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—This is not meant to be a subsidised area of activity; it is meant to be a commercial opportunity. The ABC will have spectrum there for datacasting purposes. I imagine that they would have a head start in terms of content. They would be able to enter into agreements with any other player to ensure that they have a proper datacasting facility and enjoy the fruits of that commercial exercise. But, if it were going to involve more money, it would not be a commercial operation in the first instance, so there would be no purpose in getting into it. In other words, it is not there as some sort of CSO; it is there as an opportunity to earn revenue. If the ABC is not able to persuade others that this is a good commercial opportunity, I suppose that tells you that it is not a top priority for them. But I would have thought they have a head start because they have their own content which others do not have.09:46:004848Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—Minister, I think that reinforces my point rather than providing a countervailing point to what I am saying. You say that datacasting is a competitive opportunity. The provisions of this bill provide for that commercial opportunity, if you like, not to be available to the ABC for a period of time, yet the commercial realities for other providers of datacasting service exist outside the confines of this legislation. As for a head start in content, the ABC's capacity and ability to produce content suitable for datacasting is solely contingent upon your government's decisions with respect to funding. Indeed, further, your comments with respect to the capacity of the ABC to earn revenue and make a datacasting service a commercial viability also ring patently false, given the charter of the ABC.We know that the economics of broadcasting and datacasting services are very closely related to the capacity of those services to attract advertisers. This is obviously a point of distinction between the national broadcasters, particularly the ABC, and the commercials. So the issue that you say has no relevance—being funding to the ABC—has the highest degree of relevance to the capacity of the ABC to produce not only content suitable for datacasting but also quality. There is also the question of the ability of the ABC to actually present that datacasting service across infrastructure other than digital spectrum, which is locked within the confines of this bill.09:48:004848Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The ABC already has ABC Online, which is, I think, pretty tangible proof that they can get into the business of generating broadcasting services. There is no reason at all to imagine that the ABC will not be interested in pursuing commercial opportunities with other specialist players who are not broadcasters, because there will be a revenue sharing opportunity there. The funding that is being made available by the government to the ABC is essentially to assist in the migration to digital television. That is why I say that in some respects datacasting is an optional extra. It is there. The reason it is there is that we do not think it would make sense to force any of the broadcasters to move to any particular level of digital standard at any particular point in time until we see how it plays out in the marketplace. If it turns out not to be an in-demand product, clearly it would be ridiculous to effectively try to phase out existing analog sections—doing what you lot did with analog mobile phones. So you allow it to occur progressively and you monitor that as you set your progressive standards.We can have an argument about how much money the ABC ought to get, and how quickly, for the digital rollout, but that is unrelated to datacasting. That will be something they will pursue quite separately. They will have the capacity to do it because they are being given the same seven megahertz that are available to the commercials. There will be surplus spectrum available and they will do with it what they like. I would have thought they have advantages compared to the commercials because they have a unique archive which is in considerable demand. There should not be any shortage of an ability to generate datacasting product.09:50:004848Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—I want to get this point clear from the government. You have provided $20 million to the ABC for the first stage of digital broadcasting. It is over five years or some such period of time. They are claiming that they want more and that you have been short-changing them, but that is not the point I want to raise. That money, whatever the amount of money is, will be used to put in the infrastructure for digital broadcasting generally. In the end, if they do run a commercial digital datacasting system, is it the case that the government will withdraw a proportion of that money, whatever the amount is, saying, `That bit of digital broadcasting is actually in a commercial area, and for true transparency you have got to refund to the government, because we only gave it to you for free to air broadcasting'? I just want to get it clear that later there would not be a sum taken back when you see that there is a proportion of the signal clearly being used when they have reached a commercial arrangement for a datacasting signal such as you have described, which we do not disagree with. I just want to get it clear that it is not a way for Treasury to come and to tell you to take back $5 million because they are effectively taking $5 million of that money from the infrastructure generally to run a datacasting signal.09:52:004849Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—I think you would probably find that the funding will be used for production, post-production and transmission purposes, and it may be that there is a bit of overlap in all that.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—The transmission costs.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—That is basically phase 2. Essentially, they have got the camera gear and the studio equipment and the rest which will have to be digitised. I imagine there would be some spillover, just is as there is currently with ABC Online. Our priority, and I imagine theirs, is to be able to compete effectively with the other broadcasters in digital television. If it turned out that you were able to say, `Look, they have used the money for datacasting. This is a nice little earner. They are in bed with Fairfax and they are making money out there. Because they put the money in there, they have not been able to keep up with the other networks in terms of digital television,' you would probably look askance. But I do not think that is what they will do and, to the extent that they might be able to accomplish the television objectives but at the same time assist the datacasting, I do not think anyone would have a problem.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—That's fine.09:53:004849Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—On the issue of the ability of the ABC to actually fund that content production, they will be competing with a commercial datacasting market which we know will be substantially subsidised via advertising revenue. I make specific reference again to what is a critical reference point for me throughout this debate, the trusty Working Party on the Information Economy report Content as a new growth industry . It looks specifically at the way advertising revenue is trending away from TV and splitting among other new media. I would like to read out a short paragraph. It reads:This market is increasingly fragmenting as new delivery media develop. An annual survey of advertising by DeWitt Media Inc. says marketers will continue to shift advertising dollars from the broadcast networks to other new media as broadcasters lose viewers. About 40 per cent of marketers said they planned to reallocate advertising dollars. Of the 28 per cent that said they would shift advertising dollars, 80 per cent will shift to cable television. Other media include direct mail, interactive media and computer online services.It refers to USA Today , and I quote:USA Today reported that spending for advertising placement on the World Wide Web in the first quarter of 1996 was $26 million, up 110 per cent from $13.6 million in the last quarter of 1995.It then goes on to list the top advertisers as being IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, c/net and AT&T. My point is that there is no doubt that substantial revenues will arise from datacasting services, be they in a Web format or in a more direct presentation from the commercial networks. How is the ABC going to compete in the presentation of their datacasting services, given the confines of their charter and their high reliance upon you as minister to fund them in a way which, as you have said yourself, will ensure that they are at no competitive disadvantage?09:56:004849Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—To the extent that the ABC already has transmission facilities and a full suite of services available, it might actually make sense for a datacaster to lease ABC spectrum. But, assuming that is not the principal approach, I would have thought one of the main points of distinction between the ABC and the commercial broadcasting networks is the fact that the ABC does not have advertising. So, if it is not a disadvantage there, it is not a disadvantage in datacasting otherwise, because these things will stand or fall on the quality of the content. They do not stand or fall on whether the ads are any good. You do not go to the site in the first place if it is rubbish. Clearly, if the ABC is able to achieve market share in a competitive broadcasting environment without running ads, it ought to be able to do the same with datacasting. It may well be a point of advantage. They may prefer to offer a subscription service, and I would have thought they could turn it into a nice little earner.09:57:004850Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—So your solution, from what you have described, to this disadvantage relates specifically to the content, but on the basis that the ABC will have to charge for access to the service that they hope to provide. That is quite simplistic.09:58:004850Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The choice between subscription and advertising occurs every day. Basically, a lot of services are charged for. In pay TV that is the model. Some channels are subscription, others are advertising. By and large, there is not all that much advertising on most pay TV channels, as I understand it. So there is no difference here. If the ABC wants to get into that datacasting business and is philosophically opposed to advertising, it is a bit hard to see how it makes a quid if it does not then provide a subscription service. People like Bloomberg's charge very high subscription fees because they have high-quality product. These are niche markets certainly, but people will play a lot of money for access to that service. In the same way, if the ABC is able to generate unique content, alone or in conjunction with other players, it may well be a very high demand channel.09:59:004850Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—There is no doubt that other providers of datacasting services in the current market are not relying necessarily on subscriptions but are offering products, in conjunction with partners, that do not provide for an up-front fee for access to it. Let us look again at ninemsn. The relationship between that service and Telstra provide that, if you have ninemsn product, you are also required to participate in that product using Telstra's Internet service provider, Big Pond.My point is that other services, because of their opportunity to advertise, may not be subscription based. Again, given that these services are establishing now, what you are suggesting is another layer of competitive disadvantage in that the only option for the ABC to fund such a service would be to make people pay for it up-front if they want access to that content.I agree with your points about the ABC's high standards. In fact, it is one of these outcomes that they are so under pressure in terms of funding that they have managed to develop what I would argue is the most sophisticated system and process for the production of digital content across all aspects of that organisation. I concur with any inherent structural advantages that are there, but those advantages have nothing to do with any additional revenue or support provided by your government and can be directly attributed to the creativity and innovation within that organisation. That is the only basis you have to present with respect to the ABC's ability to compete. I suggest that you need to perhaps review the Hansard afterwards but reconsider your position that you have described this morning, as I believe it structurally places the ABC in an uncompetitive position with respect to these new services.Amendments not agreed to.10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—Senator Bourne, are you intending to move Democrat amendment No. 14 on sheet 1062?10:02:004850Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—With Democrat amendments Nos 14 to 34, I have a few questions I would like to ask of the minister, but I suspect that pretty well all of those are covered by the schedule 4 amendments that we did earlier so they would not need to be moved. I do have a few questions that I would like to ask the minister to get a few things on the record with them. Firstly, with digital television requirements, particularly for the national broadcasters, it is probably pretty obvious, and I think the minister would agree, that they may need some degree of flexibility. For instance, if it were said that the commercials should show one hour of HDTV in prime time twice a week—particularly with SBS but perhaps also with the ABC—it might be better to give them the flexibility of saying so many hours in a month rather than in a week because of their buying arrangements, where they get things from and the sort of programming that they make. Is the minister prepared to look at flexibility in the review for the timing for when the national broadcasters will be required to show HDTV?10:03:004851Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—I do not have a dogmatic view on what is appropriate, and that is why we have that review, so all of these things can be fully explored. My understanding is that the high likelihood is that the broadcasters will all want to move as quickly as possible to HDTV in prime time anyway, so you almost would not need to do it. It is really beyond prime time that you then start to wonder how much you need to encourage them. The short answer is that is what the review process is for. The national broadcasters will have every opportunity to argue for points of difference between them and the commercials in terms of any requirements for minimum levels. We certainly do not have a view against that.10:04:004851Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—I have a couple of other issues. One amendment that I am not moving now is about captioning. I am sure that this will be provided for in the review, but I would like your agreement that you think it would be sensible to look at it. The captioning services, particularly for live events like news and sports, can be problematical. Should we be looking at whether captioning is reasonable in live news and current affairs and in live sport? Or is there a different type of captioning which you can do which is not real-time but has necessarily to be after the event at some point?The other point I want to make on captioning was that, particularly for SBS, much of their product already arrives with English language captioning in it. As they are a broadcaster in many different languages, I think it would be reasonable to check in the captioning section of the review whether or not all channels, in particular the SBS, should be asked to caption in the English language rather than in other languages. For SBS, in particular, it will be very difficult if they are forced to caption in the language in which the programming that they are putting to air is actually being spoken.10:06:004851Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—I think the broad principle is that we are all in favour of captioning as far as possible. There has to be some trade-off in terms of what is technically feasible to do on the run. As I understand it, you can do news because you know what the news items are in advance. There are a lot of people who are there able to convert that into screen text. But the idea of being able to effectively have an instant translation from a live feed coming in may not be practicable. The reviewer will look at all those things, starting from the premise that in the US, as I understand it, the networks have signed off to in excess of 90 per cent for captioning. If they can do it, prima facie the networks ought to be able to do it here. We go into the review wanting to see as much as possible.10:07:004851Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—I have a question for Senator Bourne. Are you basically now not proceeding with your amendments from 14 to 34? Is that correct?TW4BOURNESenator Bourne—Yes.10:07:004851Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—by leave—I move:Access regime(35) Schedule 1, item 12, page 43 (line 25), after "operator", insert "of the site".(36) Schedule 1, item 12, page 44 (line 3), after "operator", insert "of the site".(37) Schedule 1, item 12, page 44 (line 13), after "operator", insert "of the site".(38) Schedule 1, item 12, page 44 (line 16), after "operator", insert "of the site".(39) Schedule 1, item 12, page 44 (line 25), after "operator", insert "of the site".(40) Schedule 1, item 12, page 46 (line 2), after "operator", insert "of the site".These amendments look at access to national transmission network sites. In the bill it says that you have to be provided with access by the owner. We think it would be useful if it said `the owner of the site' because the owner of the site and the owner of the tower may be two different people. It is basically one that makes it more clear that anybody—a national broadcaster or a commercial broadcaster—who is broadcasting from that site should be able to gain access to the site from the person on the ground at the site. If there is somebody on the ground at the site, the person who needs access to the tower goes to the site, gets permission from the person on the ground, the owner of the site, and is then able to go in. We think that would be more useful. It may well be one that people see as six of one and a half dozen of the other. If that is the case, I do not see why we should not put it in.10:09:004852Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—I think the answer is that the landlord cannot unreasonably withhold permission to a third party. If in a lease the landlord allows the owner or operator of the transmission tower to provide facilities and that transmission tower operator then wants to provide access to ABC or commercials, the landlord would not have the ability to block that unreasonably. You then do not need to also get the permission of the owner of the site, because the owner of the site is already prepared to allow someone to operate the transmission tower. They could not then say, `But we will not let you effectively expand your operation or finetune it to accommodate new entrants.' Our advice is that it is simply not necessary, and there is already a statutory override in place.TW4BOURNESenator Bourne—Could the minister just let me know where the statutory override comes from? That would be useful.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—In this act and, indeed, in the Telecommunications Act, where you have a similar model for access, the obligation is on the owner of the transmission tower to provide access to the access seeker. That simply overrides any rights that the landlord might have to somehow veto any further access.10:11:004852Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—I think what the minister has given on the record sounds like a reasonable explanation. If any hideous court case comes up, we will rely on that and say it was all the minister's fault. After that explanation, I am prepared to withdraw those amendments.10:11:004852Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—Until we had received that explanation, we were probably inclined to support your amendment. But now that the minister has put himself on record, we understand.Amendments—by leave—withdrawn.10:11:004852Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—I move:(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 7), after item 1, insert:1A After section 28Insert:28ASection 28 does not apply to the allocation of a licence under section 38A The rule in section 28 does not apply to the allocation of a licence under section 38A.Apart from that third reading or the addition to the committee report, the only matter outstanding is an amendment which I am very confident has been circulated. It is really just to pick up on an oversight to ensure that supplementary licences can still be granted, even where you impose an embargo on new entrants for regional broadcasters. So it is 325, and it simply says, `The rule in section 28 does not apply to the allocation of a licence under section 38A.' That is what that really means—that there is still the capacity to allow supplementary licences.10:12:004852Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—I will use this opportunity, Minister. I mentioned to you privately that I wanted to ask you about the issue of Imparja Television. Imparja Television is not just a terrestrial broadcaster; it is a satellite that uses satellite systems to distribute part of its signal to its customers or consumers in various parts of outback Australia. It does have a different cost structure.Imparja has raised with my office the issue of where it fits in the great scheme of things with access to digital broadcasting, particular ly in view of the fact that it is not purely a terrestrial broadcaster. You can claim that it is a terrestrial broadcaster when people are receiving the signal, but part of the signal gets to them via a satellite distribution system.Also, because of its unique features, Imparja Television provides services to remote areas of Australia. We all know that Imparja is consistently stressed financially because of the high cost of getting its signal out to remote communities, et cetera, whether those communities are Aboriginal or mining. In my own state of South Australia, until Imparja Television turned up, remote communities in South Australia such as Coober Pedy or Leigh Creek were not able to receive any commercial television. Now they have been receiving it for over a decade or more via Imparja.The information I am seeking from the minister is whether Imparja is covered in the grand scheme of this legislation, in particular, for digital television. Is it considered to be metropolitan television; is it considered to be in an aggregated market, a solus market, or a mixture of both; or is it considered to be in an underserviced area?10:14:004853Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—The answer is that the government acknowledges the additional costs of regional and remote broadcasters, such as Imparja, and they will be assisted through the regional equalisation plan. The bill provides the ABA with the ability to vary the commercial conversion scheme to accommodate the special circumstances and special operational characteristics of remote licensees—for example, the recent conversion to digital technology, the use of satellite services and the large number of self-help facilities of remote licensees. The ABA will use the commercial conversion scheme as a benchmark that may be varied as necessary.10:15:004853Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—So the fact that it partly uses a satellite system does not mean that it falls between the stools? That is the one thing I am concerned about: that it uses a satellite system to distribute the signal. I just want to make absolutely certain that accidentally we have not excluded it under the act and that, with the definitions, it falls somewhere else.I note the minister has said that the regional equalisation plan with which he will come back to the parliament can take into account special assistance that may be needed, as I am sure it will be, by Imparja as a broadcaster, including cost of conversion. But the real issue I just want to be absolutely certain about is that Imparja does not fall out of the ambit of the bill because of it partially not being a terrestrial system.10:16:004853Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—No, it has been specifically written in. Clause 14 provides that the ABA shall have regard to the special circumstances that apply in remote licence areas.10:16:004853Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—I would follow on that point. I had the opportunity to look at the Hughes-Ericsson-Telstra partnership of Direct PC, which, Minister, obviously as you are aware, is going to be providing thousands upon thousands of farmers largely in rural Australia with an Internet based service through the government funded farm wide project. With respect to direct PC providing a service, they are capable of extending both free-to-air and pay TV signals through that infrastructure. Minister, can you describe how that particular service will fit within the definitions of the bill as they stand?10:17:004853Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—Direct PC is not providing television services; it is principally designed to accommodate those who want to have access to the Internet in remote areas. The Hughes service is separate from direct TV, which is their other satellite delivered television service. Because these are not terrestrial services, they will not be covered by the provisions of the bill.10:18:004853Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—Minister, can I just clarify that? My understanding is that a direct PC will have a capability of delivering TV services through their infrastructure, regardless of your government's intended use of that project and your funded project. So, if it is outside the scope of this bill, that means that we have digital TV being delivered via satellite spectrum that sits outside of the bill. I am concerned that, again, the issue of uncompetitive structures arises, particularly, again, when you look at some of the corporate alignments and relationships that are linked to that particular project at this point in time.10:19:004854Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—This bill is not designed to solve the problems of the entire television or Internet industries. This bill is to do with enabling broadcasters to migrate from analog to digital, according to a reasonable timetable, and at the same time to have datacasting/Internet applications available. It does not interfere in any way with the capacity of broadcasters and others to provide services such as pay TV via satellite or MDS. If Hughes TV want to come in and use the same satellite to provide some direct TV services and some direct PC services, good on them. That is just broadening the options available to consumers. All this is doing is regulating the current broadcasting arrangements via terrestrial means.Amendment agreed to.10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—The question is that the bill, as amended, be agreed to.10:20:004854Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—Yesterday I sought to follow up a series of questions to the minister and was guided by the chair that I would have the opportunity to do so. Is this my opportunity to do so?10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—Yes.7G6Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY—Thank you. The questions I wanted to follow up relate to the general theme of my contributions throughout this debate that the convergence of technologies has a huge impact on the nature and construct of this bill. The issue I am dealing with is not so much what the bill prescribes and puts in place but indeed what it does not, and what the implications are for technological convergence as a result of that.On Wednesday, in response to a number of questions that I put to you, Minister, about the scope or otherwise of the pending review you indicated that that review would not encompass any other datacasting upon infrastructure other than that provided in the digital spectrum. You made the statement that, with respect to this bill, you were trying to create a very clear distinction between Internet services and broadcast services. But, as we have seen throughout the committee stage of this bill, the blend and the convergence of those two services is a reality because commercial products are available to do that.I want to ask the minister again of his government's intention to address issues of convergence in such a way that they have some relevance over the next 18 months during the period of review, for these services are indeed providing a combination of services. To not give some indication, Minister, will show that what we are dealing with is more an exercise in excluding access to a potential service as opposed to opening opportunities and encouraging the progression to a new technology, being HDTV.10:23:004854Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—All I can say is that this little effort has very little to do with convergence. It has a lot more to do with ambit claims for making a late run to be considered as shadow minister for communications after the next election. You have not got the field to yourself. George is in here for the very same reason. I think Chris Schacht is in front at this stage. But, by all means, you are entitled in a democratic society to keep running.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—It's good to see that you concede that we are going to win the next election.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—No, I did not say that. I said this is a competition for who is going to be the shadow minister after the next election.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—I thought you were conceding that you were going to lose the election. LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—No. You run the same risk as Senator Lundy—10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—Senator Alston, would you like to address the chair, then we can deal with the matter at hand.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—Madam Chair, I simply say to Senator Lundy: if you overplay your hand and your colleagues see you asking the same question in a different guise four or five times, they might actually mark you down for that. So I would be very careful about being overly repetitious.I have told you time and again that clause 59(b) enables the convergence inquiry to deal with a whole range of other technologies. This bill is simply about terrestrial services. We can all spend as much time as we like talking about how new and exciting it is going to be in the new world. This, however, is a limited bill, and convergence will manifest itself in a variety of ways. The parliament will be required, no doubt, to address the social and other implications of those developments. But at this stage the convergence review is simply one of probably getting up to about 10. Clause 59 simply requires the review process to examine:(b) whether any amendments of laws of the Commonwealth should be made in order to deal with convergence between broadcasting services and other services.DX5MARGETTSSenator Margetts—Madam Chairman, on a point of order. I do not think there is a standing order against being patronising. But I just wonder whether or not you might speak to the minister in relation to impugning the motives of the senator for daring to ask questions.10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—I am sure the minister was not meaning to do that.10:26:004855Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—I would like to take the opportunity to respond. How typical it is of the minister for irrelevance to get up and try to ignore what is a critical question in throwing that sort of rubbish back across the chamber. There are three points I would like to make in this debate, and then I will let it sit. First of all, the importance of this bill is in what is not contained in the bill as opposed to what is. The second point is that, with respect to high definition television, the lessons of this parliament in providing a degree of technological specificity have been well learnt. They have been learnt by Labor and they have been learnt by Liberal governments for many years. Yet we see this minister and this government prevailing with a degree of specificity that is beyond all common sense at a time when—as you can see with my emphasis on convergence through the whole debate—the industry is completely subsumed with new technologies already.The point about high definition television is that it is one new technology for the presentation of content into people's homes. There is evidence already from the UK and other places that its popularity is not cracked up to what you have described. The usage of high definition television comes in not the actual picture that is presented but in the scope that digital television provides for multi-channelling and datacasting services. The emphasis on these glorious pictures that you will receive only if you have the funds within your household budgets to purchase the hardware on which it will be delivered becomes quite a ridiculous argument the longer it is perpetuated. The final point relates to the competitive environment. The degree of specificity in relation to technologies contained in this bill, the way this government has treated the ABC and the way this government is determined to blank out what is happening with new technologies on the one hand and then focus all of their attention on one glorious new technology, being high definition television, all demonstrate the incapability of the minister and the government to get a grip on what is happening with technology now. The minister's earlier comments about the respective capabilities of the providers of content competing, be they commercial or national providers, again demonstrate your ignorance with respect to what opportunities the provision of such content provides to Australia.We know that this is one of our great strengths. We know that here lies an opportunity to perpetuate and strengthen our capability in the provision of content. Senator Bourne's amendment with respect to the CER case was a classic example of where a small window of opportunity existed for the coalition in government to enhance Australia's capability to provide such quality content.The last issue I will raise is that of the relationships that exist within this sector. I believe it is incredibly important that people have access to a wide range of content. At the moment, I am concerned about a number of the government's policies, including the full privatisation of Telstra, your funding cuts and your active pursuance of the ABC in what seems to be a campaign to denigrate that organisation. This particular bill and your attitude of ignoring convergence as a technical reality demonstrate that you are happy for some particular providers to have established themselves as the dominant players not just in broadcasting but in new datacasting services.I think the opportunity for Australians to fully experience these new services will be hindered by this policy of the government. Minister, when we are back here at some point in the future, perhaps on the other side of the chamber, I am sure we will go through lengthy debates about the folly of this particular course of action that you took at this point in time, and we will be forced to revisit it time and time again.10:31:004856Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—I will respond very briefly by saying that, if Senator Lundy is seriously saying that one of the lessons to be learned is that you should not be technology specific, that is absolutely right. If this bill somehow meant that the only way in which you could move to the new digital area was via terrestrial services, the point would be very valid. But it is not doing that in any shape or form. There will be an abundance of mediums for the provision of content, as we have said. Whether they are wireless services, whether they are telephone based services, whether they are satellite services, or whether they are cable services, they are all there in abundance. All that this is doing is trying to enable the current broadcasters to move to a digital era in such a way that it does not cause disruption to consumers. If the fact is, as you say, that digital TV turns out to be a damp squib, then there is the capacity there to extend the simulcast indefinitely. So no-one for a moment is suggesting that somehow, at the end of 10 years, you have to junk your sets; that is precisely what you tried to do with the analog phase-out of mobile phones.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—You supported that.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—Do you want to apologise first?4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—No, you supported that.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—Do you want to apologise for moving it?Senator Schacht interjecting—LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—You don't?10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—Order!LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—There are none so blind—4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—We can take our bruises together if you want to, Richard.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—It is a matter of regret that the Labor Party still has not seen the error of its ways on that matter any more than it has in its blind opposition to the regional telecommunications infrastructure fund. It is just extraordinary, and the punters know it. I simply say to Senator Lundy that, far from limiting people's options, if what you are suggesting is that we somehow should have been trying to regulate the way in which people receive content through a variety of other mediums, then that would be the ultimate nightmare. If you seriously think that we should be now trying to anticipate how we can put boundaries around satellite services and MDS and all the rest, it is a lunatic proposition.A review that takes account of convergence vis-a-vis broadcasting is clearly desirable because it impacts on broadcasting, and that is what this bill is all about. If you had had your way, and if Senator Schacht's original amendments had succeeded, we would not even be looking at datacasting, multi-channelling and closed captioning.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—Yes, you would. You would have been back here within 12 months with a proper bill after a proper exposure draft.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—No, there would be no guarantee of any of that; it would have just been deleted. It would have fallen into a giant black hole, and you would have been left with a second-class digital television system, so we have avoided that little disaster. I am speechless.10:35:004857Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—Thank you for the invitation, Minister. This is the first time since you have been a minister in this place—10000CHAIRMANThe CHAIRMAN—Senator Schacht, would you address the chair, please.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—In 2¼ years as a minister, this is the first time that Senator Alston has ever admitted that he is speechless. We hope that this is a growing trend in his performance as a minister—we would all be greatly relieved. Minister, I think you missed the point of what Senator Lundy was raising.EP5FERGUSONSenator Ferguson—Sure, we all did.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—You may have. The issues are whether the structure of this bill has inadvertently—to give it the best construction—given the free to air television stations a lead start in the development of access to such things as digital datacasting, or whether that has been done deliberately by the government. I think they are genuine questions, and I think they are going to be part of the debate. One of the things we are very pleased with it—LD4ALSTONSenator Alston—You just supported this bill.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—You have surrendered and accepted. The point is that the intent of all of our amendments announced over two weeks ago has been accepted by the government. The main reason is that we were about ensuring that some of those issues that Senator Lundy raised would have to come back to this parliament and be debated by the parliament by resolution after open public disclosure of those review committees tabled in the parliament.What we have been about from the beginning is ensuring that the parliament has the final say in a positive debate. The best you were offering us was that, after all the reviews, there would be a number of regulations tabled in the parliament which would be disallowable. We all know that once that happens the government of the day is in the box seat because it can say, `Take it or leave it.' It disallows the regulations and another set of marginally different regulations are then tabled. And after another month of waiting you have another disallowance resolution. In the end, by exhaustion, the government gets its way. We did not accept that process because there are too many important decisions to be taken in the national interest in this area, and there was too much uncertainty of just where you were leading or leaving the community with the introduction of digital television.I made it clear in the second reading stage, and during earlier parts of this debate, that the government deserves to be strongly criticised for not putting this legislation out as an exposure draft for two or three months before there was even a hearing and a debate at the Senate legislative committee level. That would have been plenty of time for all those interested in this issue, whatever their conflicting interests, to consider and put forward suggestions. The government had a different agenda.The agenda was very simple. It was to meet an arrangement with the free-to-air broadcasters—bring the bill in and give it the highest priority. It was quite clear that this bill suddenly became even more important than the appropriation bill. It was even move important than the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 . The word we were given was that, clearly, this bill would have the highest priority. Some people were astonished—in view of all the other pieces of legislation and a long list from the budget bills to Telstra, et cetera—that this bill, out of the blue, would be described as the most important piece of legislation to be put before the parliament in this period.If it were so important, one would have thought that this piece of legislation would have been around, out in the community, for several months, and that is something that this minister has chosen not to do. I, again, point out to the minister that his own ABA in July last year said that this legislation did not have to be introduced until October this year, not passed by October, for a start-up date a year earlier than the minister has announced.So it is quite clear that there is a political agenda for this bill. That is accepted by everybody. Because we believe, in principle, that the introduction of digital television, HD television, is not just a new way of delivering entertainment to people but also an information system, and despite all of the problems that Senator Lundy has pointed out, the opposition accepted that the bill had to be dealt with. We are delighted that all the intent of all our amendments has been accepted—in the end, the government rolled over and accepted every one of them. That, we think, is a considerable achievement.I do notice that, in the last couple of months since this bill was introduced, the general media and comment around the place was interest in who was lobbying whom for what interest in this bill. I, as a shadow minister in this area, have to say it is true. I, like all the others who had an interest, were lobbied by the various players from the various media interests. I do not find anything untoward about the fact that my old colleague Senator Richardson was ringing up—LD4ALSTONSenator Alston—I am glad you did not say `friend'.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—Former Senator Richardson was a colleague in the Labor Party, and I have known him now for nearly 30 years. He was representing and working for PBL, and Andrew Robb, the former national secretary of the Liberal Party, was also lobbying for PBL. Mr Graeme Morris, former principal adviser to the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), was lobbying for News Limited. We also had Mr Malcolm Colless, not a former political representative down here or political staffer—apparently, he told me, he was a journalist in the press gallery in the past—lobbying. I also acknowledge—and it should be on the record, I think this should be very open—a former colleague of mine, former Senator Stephen Loosely—LD4ALSTONSenator Alston—A very low form of life.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—You might say that. That is your typical way of dealing with things. Former Senator Loosley, now a lawyer in Sydney, has spoken to me on behalf of News Limited on this and other matters. I have also seen representatives of Fairfax and representatives of provincial newspapers. Mr Cameron O'Reilly has spoken to me.DX5MARGETTSSenator Margetts—Hasn't everybody?4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—What I am saying, Senator Margetts, is that there was an obsession—LD4ALSTONSenator Alston—This is as good as it gets.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—I am just saying that there was an obsession around the place, and a lot of people tried to say that, when you actually see somebody from one of these organisations, they are trying to get at you, they are lobbying a particular interest. That is part of the political process, and quite appropriate.I had the Consumers Association speak to me. I had OzEmail, Michael Ward—people who gave evidence to the committee came and saw all of us individually. I actually asked my secretary to give me a list of all the people who had an appointment with me over the last three months. I am not going to take up the time of the Senate to put it on the record.LD4ALSTONSenator Alston—Is it true you're charging for appointments these days?4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—Of course it is not. If I did, I would declare the pecuniary interest. But the point is, Senator Alston, that you made a suggestion, in levity, I accept, that I may have been charging. You know that is absolutely ridiculous.However, the way the government handled this bill led to enormous suspicion that this government was rolling over for a political deal. With the way it was introduced, the rush with which it was dealt, suggested that there was a political deal between the minister, with the Prime Minister as a full part of it, and the existing television proprietors in Australia. That is the suggestion all over the place.You can shake your head. If you had actually put out an exposure draft of this bill in a more timely manner, Minister, those accusations may not have had the same intent and acceptance across the community as they have now. The opposition, when it got this bill, decided its position. We listened to all the various views. We decided what our amendments would be. We are delighted the government rolled over and accepted the intent of every one of them.ZW4SHERRYSenator Sherry—And was left speechless.4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—And was left speechless, as Senator Sherry says. I am putting on the record the fact that intense lobbying went on—which was to be expected, as big interests were at stake. I think the outcome of the bill is the best we could do in view of the hurried way the government introduced it. Minister, I trust that, while you are still the minister—which may only be for a few months—you take note of the fact that in the future, when the opposition is in government and dealing with such bills, I give a commitment that we will make every endeavour to put such bills out as an exposure draft to the broad community for a period of some months.When I was a minister, we rewrote the full Customs Act. That went out as an exposure draft for a lengthy period of time so that everybody had a chance to see what was in it and to make representations to parliamentarians if they could see ways to improve it. Out of that process, everybody—including the community—got a better bill. That is the process we should always adopt in government on this sort of legislation. An exposure draft should be put out in the community for a lengthy period.Minister, I understand that you are going to move a motion on the adoption of the report for referral to a committee. On this motion, the reporting date is by the end of October. We were told at the estimates committee that the reporting date for the ABA's inquiry into the Blue Sky matter, as it is called, is January of next year. I am not arguing about the timetable. Because of the statutory require ment in the way the ABA conducts its inquiry, will people claim that they are constrained in what they can tell a Senate committee on these issues because they have to give evidence to the ABA?I think the ABA is conducting this inquiry partly in private. I do not know whether it is going to have public hearings. I want to make sure that, as a member of the committee you have referred it to, we do not have a hearing and find that everybody who turns up says, `Sorry, I can't say anything because the ABA hasn't completed its hearing and we can't make any comment till they do because we do not want to prejudice our position.' Some people take every opportunity to claim commercial-in-confidence, sub judice, et cetera. I want to make sure that there is no restraint on anybody giving evidence to the ERCA committee as part of this review.Minister, when we get to the third reading I will also give my thanks on the record to a number of people who have been involved in drafting amendments and providing advice on this bill. However, while we are doing the summing up of the committee stage, I would like to get that clear.Senator Alston interjecting—4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—If you are going to put the bids in, Minister, you might be lucky, or you might actually do him in.10:48:004859Margetts, Sen DeeSenator MARGETTSDX5WAG(WA)00—The minister will be moving a third reading amendment. I draw it to the Senate's attention that I also have a third reading ammendment. There is a basic difference between the minister's third reading amendment and my third reading amendment: the minister's amendment only deals with subsection 160(d) of the Broadcasting Services Act, which is the Australian content issue which was brought up as a result of the outcome of the New Zealand court case.I certainly agree that this is an important issue. We have had a lot of statements by the government that it will deal with this issue. Without revisiting Australia's trade regime, I am not sure what the Australian government will be able to do legislatively, but I look forward to seeing how this particular issue can or may be solved. I would like to bring to the attention of the Senate that I believe—and I have said this all along—that the framework and the basis of this decision needs to be revisited.As Senator Schacht just indicated, the bill should have been put out as an exposure draft. In reality, I think the entire bill should be revisited, with the ability to take those things into proper consideration. Whilst subsection 160(d) is an interesting element and useful to look at, I will still be moving that the references committee look at the bill and the implications of that as a whole—not just the words of the bill but what the other options could be. The legislation committee tends not to be able to look at other options.I will be asking that the bills be referred to the Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee so that not only the bill can be looked at but so that the opportunity is also there to look at other options and examine what options we are cutting off by taking this particular framework. It is a pity that, while Senator Schacht talks about the government rolling over, the clear indication is that, over the last couple of days, the opposition has rolled over and allowed this framework to go through in such an unacceptable manner.10:50:004860Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—In relation to the Greens (WA) amendment, it is pure and unadulterated grandstanding. Essentially, this very bill has already been to the Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee—4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—For three weeks.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—Yes, for three separate hearings. Senator Margetts was entitled to be there as a participating member, but she took no interest in proceedings. She did not see the need to participate in a Senate hearing then, but now she gets up at the eleventh hour and suggests that we go through precisely the same process with pretty much the same bill. I suggest that it ought to be referred to the Greens National Policy Consultative Committee and it can spend as much time as it likes dealing with the issue.As far as the amendment is concerned, Senator Schacht, I used the term `31 October' yesterday as shorthand. The actual wording is `the first sitting day after 31 October'. As I understand it, the ABA will have released a draft standard by 1 October, so that will be on the public record. I would expect that the ABA would be prepared to come along and cooperate with the committee. To that extent, you will have not only the formal position but, as much as you need it, the ABA's broader assessment of the issues. The revised version is required to be proclaimed by 1 January. The timetable that we have set enables us to look at what will, by then, be on the public record, as well as any other matters.10:52:004860Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—The ABA is dealing with its witnesses and getting information for its draft outcome, which will be available to us before the committee concludes its business. That is fine; it is excellent. I am trying to ensure that we do not get someone saying, `Until the ABA completes its business, we're not making any other public comment.' I hope the ABA can indicate to people that there is not a conflict of interest in giving evidence to the parliamentary committee after the ABA has released its first draft. I have a suspicion that at some time some people will use it as an excuse not to give us evidence.10:53:004860Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—The minister made a few comments about the Senate committee looking into this. He seemed to think that we were able to have a massive inquiry into this bill and the related issues. Those who read the transcripts and the report of the committee will see that that is obviously not the case. We had three meetings with the committee, all of which were in Canberra. It was very difficult to even begin to understand all the very technical issues and the possibilities for the future, which are endless and absolutely huge, with three committee hearings.The chair of that committee did a very good job. She kept everybody in line very well. It was not easy with all of us on that committee, but she did it. It was very difficult. We had very little time to hear a great many people who wanted to give evidence. We had very little time to consider the chairman's draft. The committee had very little time to write the chairman's draft, and the chairman had little time to consider it herself. While the committee report was very good and the staff need to be commended on it, I cannot see how you can consider it to have been a comprehensive review of this legislation. It simply was not. It could not be in that time frame.I recall when we had the review of the subscription television legislation that the minister was the one who believed at the time from opposition that 12 weeks was far too short a time to consider such a massive change to Australian broadcasting. He was right at the time, and it is right again now. We need more time to consider everything about this. I am pleased to see that we have a bit more time with the proclamation date on the bills. I do not think it is reasonable to assume that the Senate committee has had a very comprehensive and thorough look at the issues involved in this. They are far too huge.10:55:004861Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—I put a specific question to the minister in my previous speech to which he can respond. I also emphasise and support the remarks of Senator Bourne. Someone said that this bill should be referred to a references committee. The opposition said that it was happy for it to go to a legislation committee but that it should report in late August or early September. We knew that what was in this bill was significant not just for the next year but for the next decade or more. The government insisted that it be considered and reported on so that the bill could be dealt with under its political agenda and put through before this session of parliament ended. That is why it was jammed through.I attended every hearing. I do not disagree with Senator Bourne that, under the pressure, Senator Paterson, as chair of the committee, did quite a reasonable job. We appreciated the fact that the minister's department came along and gave a briefing about the technical aspects of the bill. It was all very useful. But we got so many people put in a one-page submission and then say, `We want to give a more detailed submission on this issue, but we do not have time.' We gave people 11 days to put in a submission. We had to accept that they could put supplementary submissions in as they got a chance to read the bill and consider it for a few days.When other people put in other submissions, we did not have an opportunity to cross-reference the submissions. This was really critical. It would have been much better for the committee—we have done this before on this committee and others; it is a most useful thing to do—to have some protagonists put their case and then have others present to argue against it. This would have enabled the senators present to make a judgment about the merits of the various arguments. We did that last year.LD4ALSTONSenator Alston—Is this your definition of chaos theory?4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—If you want to sound like an idiot suggesting that, that is your business. Last year, we dealt with the deregulatory bill for telecommunications. It was certainly the biggest package of bills on telecommunications. When we sat in January and February, the draft bill had been out in various forms for over two years and people still wanted to make further amendments to it. Instead of having the various protagonists come to give evidence one by one at the hearings, we put several of them together at the table. We always had Department of Communications and the Arts representatives present so that when someone from an organisation gave a view you could check with the department whether it was technically correct and legislatively possible. We could then immediately make a judgment about it.That expedited the process of dealing with a very technical bill. When it came back in here, though it still took two weeks in the committee stage for that bill to go through the parliament, we had removed most of the argument and we had reached agreement on a sensible outcome. If we had not had that process, we would probably still be in the committee stage on the regulatory bill for telecommunications or we would have fallen over through sheer exhaustion.My view, whether I am a minister or a shadow minister, is that that is the most sensible way to handle complex bills. It is to the advantage of the government of the day to do it this way. If you try as a government of the day to ram a bill through that is complex and has long-term implications, you will end up with a mess on your hands. What will invariably happen is that someone will be back here within six weeks demanding an amendment—oh, we've made a drafting error—and you have to re-amend the bill.Minister, the opposition completely supports the issues that Senator Bourne has raised. I agree that there are lots of other bills that come before us that can be dealt with in a couple of Friday hearings of a legislative committee, but not this bill. The only reason that we did not get a decent time to deal with it is that suddenly it was on the government's political agenda to reach an agreement to buy favour with the television broadcasters in Australia. That was the bottom line.From the very beginning, even back when the bill was first introduced through that brief committee hearing, the opposition prepared a policy outcome that did not please all players on all sides. You could not do that. But the other thing we did not do is play favouritism with one group of proprietors, which this bill in its initial draft by this minister was aimed at—fixing up a political arrangement and buying political favour with the television broadcasters of Australia. The government played favourites.We have amended the bill as best we can in this process. And I have to say to Senator Margetts that the point she raised has some validity, that the bill should be referred back to a reference committee for further consideration. We made it clear last week that if any of our substantial, significant amendments had been rejected by the government, at the third reading stage we would have moved that the whole bill be referred back to the committee. We made that very clear. I think that is one reason why the government rolled over and accepted our amendments.The intent of every one of our amendments has been achieved. The minister may try to make a little argy bargy about, `Well, we've drafted them a bit differently from when we initially put them forward,' but the intent we were after we achieved 100 per cent. In terms of who put the white flag up the pole higher, we certainly did not do it; the minister had to do it. When he says that he has achieved a great victory at our expense, by comparison, he sounds a bit like General Custer when he was being scalped at Little Bighorn claiming that it was just a rearrangement of his haircut. We are delighted to have achieved those outcomes, but we are very sad that the government, for a political arrangement, had a very inappropriate parliamentary process to deal with a very important bill.11:02:004862Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTONLD4VICLPCommunications, the Information Economy and the Arts10—As far as the Senate inquiry is concerned, I would certainly expect all the interested parties to put in submissions, and there will be no—4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—No inhibition from the ABA.LD4Alston, Sen RichardSenator ALSTON—There is no reason why they will not be dealing with both. I certainly think they will take every opportunity to press their case, as they should.I conclude by thanking all those who have been involved in the exercise, particularly David Quilty from my staff and Mark Hough from Senator Schacht's staff. It has been quite an exercise in trying to achieve some degree of agreement on the amendments. I have to say that in the first blush of enthusiasm we thought that that would result in a committee stage of less than hour; we are now well beyond the six-hour point. I would also like to pay tribute to the department, particularly Col Lyons. It is a very difficult bill, as we all know, to get on top of and to have people who understand every aspect of it is tremendously important from my point of view. It is not the first time that Col Lyons has been a tower of strength on this type of legislation.11:04:004862Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—While we are saying thank you, I would like to thank, on the technical side, David Quilty from the minister's office and to particularly thank my own staff member, Mark Hough, for the work he put in. I also thank Col Lyons from the department for the discussion about drafting. I also want to thank the Procedures Office's Rosemary Laing for providing a lot of advice. We all know that in opposition you do not have the same access to the same drafting resources as government, and the Procedures Office of the Senate is the office of last resort to get advice from for an opposition, and I say that not in a derogatory way. I also thank Sue Blunden for preparing the usual running sheets, which make these whole processes work pretty well.I also thank the officers of the Democrats, Joanne and others, for their cooperation in working this through. Again, I emphasise and thank those from all the various vested interest groups who took the trouble to ring up and lobby the opposition and, as they said, claimed that they were always only motivated by altruism and the national interest in why they wanted certain things done in this bill. I am sure in the next media bill we have before us, the same processes and lobbying will take place for it. I look forward to the next round of lobbying.From this perspective, when we next deal with this bill, I am very confident that I will be dealing with it as the minister for communications in 12 to 18 months time, and I look forward to doing that. I can assure the Senate that the parliamentary process will be not be done in the rorted way it was this time by the government.11:06:004863Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNETW4NSWAD00—While we are thanking people, I would like to thank my own staffer, Joanne Yates, who I noticed nobody else mentioned, but I think in fact she probably knows more about it than everybody else concerned.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—I did mention Joanne.TW4Bourne, Sen VickiSenator BOURNE—You did? Thank you very much, Senator Schacht. I would also like to thank other staffers, Mark Hough and David Quilty, who are both very knowledgeable about this. I am very grateful that all three were so reasonable in their discussions with each other. Rosemary Laing, who wrote our amendments with about five seconds notice, is also to be very much commended. Rosemary has to be one of the most efficient drafters of amendments I have ever come across in my life. I do not know how she does it; she reads minds and knows exactly what you are talking about, even when you don't. I would like to thank her for being so efficient and for coming up with such terrific amendments.Col Lyons from the department has been very helpful and very good to me. He listened to my questions when he was supposed to be listening to the minister. Finally, I would like to thank the committee secretariat who dealt with the inquiry into this legislation at the same time as they were dealing with the inquiry into the Telstra legislation. How they handled that in the one go and in such incredibly short time frames just amazes me.I have seen the minister's promised amendment. We will keep the committee on their toes by making sure that they do not get any rest at all and get straight into looking at the Australian content rules in this legislation. I am sure they are doing other things; I think a committee reference for them is coming up directly after we conclude the consideration of this legislation. There are a lot of people to thank. This is an incredibly complex issue which I am just starting to understand. I am looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.Bill, as amended, agreed to.DX5MARGETTSSenator Margetts—I would like to have the Greens (WA) no vote registered.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN (Senator Reynolds)—It would be more appropriate to do so at the third reading stage.DATACASTING CHARGE (IMPOSITION) BILL 1998Bill agreed to.Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Bill 1998 reported with amendments; Datacasting Charge (Imposition) Bill 1998 reported without requests.4863Motion (by Senator Alston) proposed:That the report from the committee be adopted.Motion (by Senator O'Chee) agreed to:At the end of the motion, add: " and that the following matter be referred to the Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts Legisla tion Committee for inquiry and report by the first sitting day after 31 October 1998:The implications of retaining, repealing or amending paragraph 160(d) of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, having regard to:(1) the meeting of Australia's cultural objectives;(2) the implications for Australia's international obligations and their implementation, for the conduct of its international relations, and for its international trade and trade policy interests;(3) the object set out in paragraph 3(e) of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 ;(4) the role and functions of the Australian Broadcasting Authority in relation to the setting and the administration of Australian content standards; and(5) the Australian Broadcasting Authority's draft revised Australian content standard for free to air commercial television".11:10:004864Margetts, Sen DeeSenator MARGETTSDX5WAG(WA)00—I move:At the end of the motion, add: "and that, in view of the need for further consultation, the bills be referred to the Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee for inquiry and report by the last sitting day in October 1998".This amendment does what should have been done all along, which is for the Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee to look not only at these bills, but at the other options which we may have missed out on or can still, hopefully, change.Question resolved in the negative.DX5MARGETTSSenator Margetts—I ask that the Greens (WA) vote be registered.Original question, as amended, resolved in the affirmative.4864Motion (by Senator Alston) proposed:That these bills be now read a third time.11:11:004864Margetts, Sen DeeSenator MARGETTSDX5WAG(WA)00—Today, the Financial Review , one of the few independent newspapers in Australia, has been attacked by the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts (Senator Alston). In an article in the newspaper, he states:. . . the AFR's shrill call for my resignation was so obviously over the top that it was met with a deafening silence from all political parties and interest groups.It was not so met from all political parties; that was probably an incorrect statement, Minister. In the article he continues:It also makes some kindergarten comments linking the Government's digital broadcasting policy with the issue of gratuitous sex on TV.I think that is the punishment you get for daring to speak out. Because there are so few independent broadcasters and even media outlets that are not connected with the networks that we are talking about, it is so easy to point at the Financial Review and target them. That is why it is so necessary for us to consider this kind of broadcasting bill properly, rather than have everything concentrated in one or two major hands.11:12:004864Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT4J4SAALP00—Senator Margetts drew attention to an editorial in the Financial Review some time ago which, with regard to this debate, demanded that the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts (Senator Alston) resign. Senator Margetts, I want to make it quite clear that we have been calling for this minister's resignation for a long time on any number of issues. We have called for it on the basis of the broken promises about funding for the ABC, the mess he made in trying to change the cross-ownership rules, the lack of money for the ABC for digital conversion—the list is long and varied. So we are delighted that the Financial Review came to the same conclusion that we reached over a year ago that this minister should have resigned.I also note that the same article quotes me as describing the Financial Review as being the last repository of supporters of rational free trade marketeers, et cetera. I find it interesting, Senator Margetts, that you quote the Financial Review on any matter, because you generally and particularly oppose every one of their views on economic matters in Australia. And that is your right, too.10000DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe DEPUTY PRESIDENT—Senator Schacht, would you like to address the chair, please. 4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—I am doing it through you, Madam Deputy President.10000DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe DEPUTY PRESIDENT—No, you should be speaking to me and not—VW4HERRONSenator Herron—Don't argue with the chair.10000DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe DEPUTY PRESIDENT—Order, Senator Herron!4J4Schacht, Sen ChrisSenator SCHACHT—It is a shame that the chamber is not friendly on these matters, but I accept your ruling, of course, Madam Deputy President. I know that for Senator Margetts this must be one of the only times that you and the Financial Review feel the same way on an issue. I note the irony in that. I think you have every right to raise some of these issues, but I put on the record that we are delighted that the Financial Review has come to the same position as the opposition—that this minister should have resigned long ago.11:15:004865Margetts, Sen DeeSenator MARGETTSDX5WAG(WA)00—Madam Chair, I need to mention the fact that—10000DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe DEPUTY PRESIDENT—Are you seeking leave?DX5Margetts, Sen DeeSenator MARGETTS—I seek leave to address very briefly those aspersions that have been cast on me.4J4SCHACHTSenator Schacht—I didn't cast any aspersions at all.Leave granted.DX5Margetts, Sen DeeSenator MARGETTS—There are Keynesians writing for the Financial Review , there are people who have done political economy writing for the Financial Review ; they may well be considered to be on the far left of politics by most people in the Senate, but there are people for whom I have the greatest respect—and Senator Schacht may have missed that point—with a variety of opinions. At least you get a variety of opinions in the Financial Review which you do not necessarily get in some other broadcasting outlets.11:16:004865Lundy, Sen KateSenator LUNDY7G6ACTALP00—I wish to make a few comments with respect to the third reading of the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Bill 1998 . I concur with previous comments by Senator Schacht in that just about every significant piece of legislation brought forward to this place by the minister there has been some dire sense of urgency or some critical element that will allow the progression of telecommunications and new technologies to proceed. Unfortunately, it is without too much surprise that we saw this legislation being pressured through in the way that it was by the minister.In closing my remarks, I would like to refer to one of the submissions to the inquiry into this bill. It is from the Australian Information Industry Association Limited. The point they make—and I think it is entirely valid in the context of the argument—is that this bill essentially provides free-to-air broadcasters with control to the gateway and navigation system through which information providers and other datacasters may wish to access consumers.With the privatisation of Telstra and the alliance of both Microsoft and PBL with Telstra, my concern is that Telstra's very own—or our very own—telecommunications network will be used to provide the means by which Australians will have their first interface with datacasting services, and indeed many of the Internet services they will provide. And I, for one, do not subscribe to the concept of my view on the world, through new technologies, being through that of Bill Gates.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bills read a third time.Committees48654865486510000DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe DEPUTY PRESIDENT—The President has received a letter from the Leader of the Government in the Senate seeking to vary the membership of a committee.Motion (by Senator Alston) agreed to:That Senator Ian Macdonald be appointed a participating member of the Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee for the committee's inquiry into the development of Hinchinbrook Channel.Bills4866r5004866Debate resumed from 24 June, on motion by Senator Ian Campbell:That this bill be now read a second time.11:20:004866Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—I rise to speak on the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 . Members of the public and members of the Senate might be fooled into thinking that this piece of legislation deals entirely with country of origin. Bearing in mind the title of the bill and the exposure which the bill has received, I think that would be a pretty reasonable misunderstanding. Of course, this bill is not restricted just to country of origin, though it is a very important part of it. I will return to discuss that issue at a later stage in the second reading debate.There is something that disturbs the opposition particularly; that is, what is contained in schedule 2 of this bill, which is titled fairly innocuously `Miscellaneous Provisions'. When drafting this bill, the government has taken action which, I believe, is entirely inappropriate, deceptive and dishonest. Contained within schedule 2 is a provision inserted by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, Mr Reith, which attempts to take action retrospectively against the MUA for the industrial action that now seems largely to be resolved.Last night, watching the 7.30 Report, I saw that Mr Reith, despite the depth that he dragged this country down to, is entirely unrepentant and continues to peddle this absurd view that he, Mr Howard and the government, despite the documentary evidence which has been tabled in the House and provided to members of the media, knew nothing about the plans proposed to sack the work force on our wharves. I am sure there are a large number of people who believe, despite the increased productivity on the wharves, that there was real need for reform. I put that issue aside because I do not believe that we can deny that improvements and productivity are advantageous.I and the community are very concerned to see Mr Howard—the Prime Minister and supposed leader of this country—and his industrial relations minister being involved in a deceptive, dishonest and disingenuous conspiracy to sack a group of Australian workers. No matter how Mr Reith tries to demonise the work force on the wharves, the fact is that they are Australian workers who are entitled to retain their jobs and rely on the fact that the government which many of them may have elected will not enter into a conspiracy with Patrick's and a range of other people.KI4PARERSenator Parer—I raise a point of order. I question the relevance of this speech in regard to the Trade Practices Amendment Bill.B36Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEAL—If you had read the bill, you would probably realise. If you listen to my speech, I will explain it to you.10000ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Reynolds)—There is no point of order, but I would ask the speaker to address the issues in the bill, which I am sure she is doing.B36Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEAL—I am somewhat astonished that the minister, whom I understand has the conduct of this bill, does not realise that contained in schedule 2 entitled `Miscellaneous amendment' is a provision that allows the ACCC to pursue unions through the courts under the restricted trade practices section of the Trade Practices Act.HX5WOODLEYSenator Woodley—It's a sneaky amendment.B36Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEAL—This is extraordinarily sneaky.ZW4SHERRYSenator Sherry—The minister has even missed it.B36Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEAL—It does concern me a little that the minister does not even seem to understand that this is the effect of schedule 2 of the bill. I do not accept his lack of understanding, despite the other matters on his mind at the moment and his personal concerns. Bearing that in mind, he has failed to miss a major part of this bill.I believe that this government is showing complete and utter disregard, not only for this house and already for the other house but also for the people of Australia. The government believes that this important provision should be snuck through under the skirts of a country of origin labelling bill. That is exactly what the government is attempting to do.If the government believe that this debate should occur—and obviously from their ideological position they believe that—that is well and good. They are the government. They do control the legislation that is debated in this parliament and they are quite entitled to introduce a bill that has that effect. But to do it in this way, to try to disguise a fairly important industrial relations provision within a bill dealing with country of origin, I find quite extraordinary.We will be moving an amendment to excise this portion of the bill and we ask—both in terms of the credibility of this house and the honesty of this government—that they introduce a separate bill, if they so desire, that deals with this issue and allows people to properly see what their agenda and objectives are. Certainly, they are not doing it cleanly or fairly. They are not doing it in the proper traditions of democracy, which say that we may have differences of opinion, but when we do have those differences of opinion they are debated cleanly and openly in this house, and those who have the majority will in the end win the day. This is not what they have done.Under items 3 and 5 of this bill, subsection 87(1B) will enable the ACCC to take representative action for anti-competitive conduct. This is in addition to the already listed matters that the ACCC can already take action under, which are contained in part 4 of the Trade Practices Act. This includes the notorious secondary boycott provisions of section 45D.This is a fundamental change in our industrial relations policy that will allow the ACCC to pursue actions against workers and unions who have engaged in industrial action. It does apply retrospectively and we have had the debate on the issue of retrospectivity over and over again in this chamber. This particular provision is almost certainly designed to apply retrospectively to allow the ACCC to pursue the MUA and its supporters for action taken during the recent dispute.Basically, this Prime Minister and industrial relations minister, who, having played the game—and, frankly, played it pretty badly—have decided that the way to win is to change the rules after the event to try to save their skins and the remnants of self-confidence that they have at the moment. I do not believe it is in the interests of Australia and it is entirely underhanded for the government to behave in this way.I intend to leave the matter for the time being, but we will return to it. I am sure that some of my colleagues who have particular interest in industrial relations will have a few words to say. I hope that they will make this chamber understand fully the anger that we feel at the way this government has attempted to dupe the Australian population by behaving in such a dishonourable way. Bearing in mind that the bill has `country of origin' in its title, I will deal with those aspects of the bill as well. Because of my time limit, I will now turn to that section of the bill contained in schedule 1.The opposition agrees that this legislation is an improvement on the existing arrangements for country of origin labelling. On that basis, we will not seek to prevent this legislation going through because, to date, the validity of a manufacturer's claim to country of origin has only been designated by section 52 of the Trade Practices Act, relating to misleading and deceptive conduct, and section 53, relating to misleading as to country of origin. These provisions are enforceable, as are all provisions under the Trade Practices Act, by the ACCC. Essentially it says that you cannot make a statement about a product that is false and misleading and, if you do, the ACCC can take action against you.In fact, there is nothing contained in the legislation—besides saying you cannot be misleading—to actually allow certainty so that those people selling products know what sort of label they can put on their products and not be in breach of this particular provision. There has been quite a large amount of case law which tried to define what sort of label ling as to country of origin was appropriate and would not be misleading. It has created rather a complex body of law that has become a bit of a nightmare for those people who are selling and manufacturing products in Australia.In the period since this government was elected in March 1996—almost three years, but not quite because we are looking at an early election—this government has said that it will bring legislation into this chamber in order to rectify the situation and provide some certainty in relation to country of origin. It is interesting to note that the consumer interest coalition policy document that was distributed widely during the election stated its policy as such. It said:Products labelled `Made in Australia' must be genuinely manufactured in this country from Australian components and ingredients.That is a fairly straightforward and clear statement, I suppose, but I have to say that that is not really the policy that is contained in the bill that is before us.I find it extraordinary that, in all the discussion that has gone on to date, there has been no acknowledgment by this government—and I hope the minister can stand up and honestly acknowledge there has been a shift in policy since they moved from the seats on this side of the chamber to the red seats on the other side of the chamber—that in fact the proposal contained in this bill that is before us as to country of origin is nothing like what was set out in their original policy document.The proposal that is before us provides for two categories. Essentially, there is a category that will be known either as `Product of Australia' or `Produce of Australia'. That product must be 100 per cent Australian or very close to it. I think most people would say that that is a fairly reasonable form of labelling for those sorts of products. But where it becomes difficult is that the government have created a second category of `Made in Australia'. In their policy document they clearly said that products labelled `Made in Australia' must be genuinely manufactured in this country from Australian components and ingredients. That is why it is quite extraordinary to look at this bill. It actually says that a product can be labelled `Made in Australia' if it is substantially transformed in Australia and is 50 per cent, by cost, Australian. That is an interesting concept—one I am sure will be interpreted ad infinitum by the courts. We have a situation where this government is putting forward a bill enabling a product that is, in fact, 50 per cent by cost a foreign product to be labelled `Made in Australia' and not be in breach of the Trade Practices Act.It was put to us by a number of people that there is concern about this. Imagine, if you can, Minister, that you are a consumer, wandering down the grocery aisles. You pick up a product and look at it—strawberry yoghurt, say—and see that it is labelled `Made in Australia'. You would think it would quite reasonable for someone picking up such a product to assume that the milk, the strawberries and everything else contained in it were made in Australia. But, under this legislation, this product may very well be half foreign product. In fact, the strawberries contained in it or, in reverse, the milk, may come from outside Australia.It is a concern not only of consumers who are interested in seeing some sort of honesty in labelling but also of groups in the community—for example, the primary producers who either grow strawberries or produce milk—that people can have the advantage of using the label `Made in Australia' and might be able to rely on that label to convince people to buy the product when in fact they are using foreign material. The view of most Australians is that they wish to promote Australian products and promote Australian jobs.This is a real concern, and it is a matter that was raised in the Senate inquiry. I know that it is a matter that this government does not seem particularly concerned about. I suppose that is because, in large part, industry—apart from some specific primary producers, and I will talk about them in a moment—believe that, having waited almost three years, any sort of increased certainty is a better proposition than the sort of situation that has continued until this time.That is why the opposition, though we are very concerned about the aspects of the bill that I have outlined, do not intend to prevent the passage of this bill. But let me tell you clearly, we will be monitoring very carefully what occurs in relation to this bill and, if the problems arise that we anticipate, we will be taking action in the future to amend this legislation to make it a bit more honest and fairer, and to have products that have the advantage of being labelled `Made in Australia' actually have a reasonable level of Australian product in them.There is an issue I wish to speak briefly about in the few minutes I have, and that is the green and gold kangaroo, the made in Australia logo that used to be administered by the Advance Australia Foundation. A very successful and respected organisation in the community it was. It essentially administered the licensing of the logo that people were able to rely on as indicating an Australian product. In the first budget after this government was elected, the funding provided to it by the federal government was completely scrapped. It was not a huge amount of money; in the scheme of things it was paltry—$1.5 million. But, as soon as this government got in, it did not like to see money being provided to an independent body to administer the green and gold kangaroo, a scheme that was designed to enhance and improve the marketability of Australian products. As a result, that organisation went into liquidation and, though in theory the logo licence continues, any administration or promotion of that logo has gone, because the foundation no longer exists.Having been the instrument of the destruction of the Advance Australia Foundation which promoted the green and gold kangaroo, just before an election this government suddenly decide that they too support the green and gold kangaroo, the logo created and promoted by the previous Labor government. This government have decided once again that they will embrace a very good policy that we began. How are they going to do this? They are not going to have it administered by an independent body; they are going to hand it over lock, stock and barrel to the Chamber of Commerce. (Time expired)11:40:004869Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—The Australian Democrats welcome this bill, the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 . In doing so, I want to thank the many people who have consulted with us on this issue about their concerns on labelling. That goes not only to this particular piece of legislation but to the fact that the government were so tardy in bringing in any legislation along these lines, despite the fact that it was one of the issues they trumpeted in their pre-election propaganda. I wonder about the coincidence, having myself introduced a bill to deal with labelling, that it was just a few weeks after that that we then saw the government legislation. I would not want to make any inference from that; I am sure it was simply a coincidence.In thanking a lot of people who had great concerns about the issue and still have concerns about this legislation, I would like to mention particularly the Victorian Strawberry Growers Association and the Australian Strawberry Growers Association, who brought to my attention a range of products which all purported to be Australian products or made in Australia. They had no description like that but simply had an address on them which was an address of some particular office in Australia. The inference in all of those cases was that somehow or other the product which contained strawberries was a product of Australia or was made in Australia. The growers pointed out, in putting this range of products before me—I do not think I should mention the product names—that every one of those products contained Mexican strawberries. In fact, there were virtually no Australian strawberries in any of those products; they were all imported strawberries. On only one of those products was there any indication that perhaps some of the contents may not be totally Australian.So there is a real difficulty which this legislation seeks to address. I think it is an improvement on previous legislation. We need to say to the Labor Party that this is an improvement on previous legislation that had been enacted by the previous government.B36NEALSenator Neal—It is almost identical.HX5Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEY—But it does have a lot of problems, Senator Neal. That is what I want to address, and I know you are seeking to address this by some of your amendments, as we will and as the Greens will in the amendments they bring forward. Let me also thank Harry Wallace from the Australian Owned Companies Association and congratulate him once again for the work he has done on behalf of Australians with his AusBuy guide, which the Democrats give away in their hundreds. We continually run out of them because people really want to know what is Australian and how they can buy Australian products. Harry Wallace, a successful businessman himself, set up the Australian Owned Companies Association, which he has funded himself, in order to put in people's hands a tool which they can use to identify genuine Australian products. I think that this country owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude for the work that he did, which he funded himself, in order to support Australian companies. He is a great Australian and he has done a great job.I would like to thank the Australian Consumers Association, which made a very useful submission to the committee which inquired into the bill. I have had discussions with many farmers' organisations—particularly the South Australian Farmers Federation and the National Farmers Federation—which were concerned that the government did not seem to be moving on something they had promised and which the organisations saw as essential to their attempts to allow Australian consumers who wished to do so to buy Australian primary products.As I have said, we introduced our own bill, and I might indicate the process that we entered into. We do not think that our ideas are so perfect that we cannot benefit from discussion with other people. I know that my bill—if we had proceeded with it—now needs amendment. It is important that legislation always goes through a process of discussion with the people most affected by it. I recommend that as a process to the government: it really is helpful to get input from other people. I indicate that my colleague Senator Meg Lees some years ago conducted a trial of a Democrat proposal for labelling, and we did that through one of the food chains in South Australia.3I6STOTT DESPOJASenator Stott Despoja—Foodland.HX5Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEY—Foodland. We discovered that consumers were enthusiastic about the proposal that we had put up because they really wanted to buy Australian made products. It was a scheme in which there was a scale A, B, C and D. A represented entirely Australian product with Australian owned companies, D represented totally imported product, while B and C were somewhere in between. I simply say that to underline that people really do want legislation which enables them to address this issue.Let me now turn to the legislation itself. Currently, section 53 of the Trade Practices Act prohibits false or misleading representations being made about the origin of goods offered for sale in Australia. There has, however, been a good deal of trouble establishing just what constitutes false or misleading representation for the purposes of this section. The legislation before us today seeks to address that issue. It does that by establishing that a corporation making a claim about the country of origin of a particular good will not breach the Trade Practices Act where the claims it makes meet certain criteria. For example, to be able to claim that a good is the product of Australia all the ingredients contained within that good must be from Australia, and virtually all production processes must have been undertaken within Australia. That is a good piece of legislation. To be able to claim that a good was made in Australia, it will have to have been what is referred to as `substantially transformed' here in Australia and that at least 50 per cent of the cost of producing the product was incurred in Australia. That would rule out the misleading labelling of those strawberry products that I described earlier.The Democrats are generally supportive of this legislation. We will, however, be seeking to amend the bill, and I would like to briefly outline some of the concerns we will be aiming to address. Firstly, we believe that, where a corporation makes a claim about the country of origin of any ingredients within a product, that claim should be subject to the restrictions in this bill. This is in line with our belief that consumers should be given full information and not be taken for granted. I described to you the trial that we conducted in South Australia which showed that consumers were enthusiastic about a labelling process which actually enabled them to know what they were buying.Secondly, the bill in its current form applies a 50 per cent cost test for the `Made in Australia' descriptor. The Democrats believe that this 50 per cent threshold is too low and that a 75 per cent threshold is a more appropriate level. That was the advice we took from the Victorian strawberry growers, and that would be their preference. This higher cut-off would provide a greater level of credibility to the product that has a `Made in Australia' label. It will also provide a boost to local producers, as it will encourage food manufacturers, such as yoghurt manufacturers, to use Australian soft fruit in their manufacture. I was interested to see that the Greens also have some amendments on this issue and indicate that the Democrats will consider those carefully in the committee stage.Thirdly, we believe the regulations to this act should provide examples of what constitutes substantial transformation. Clearly this is a qualitative test and may turn out to be very difficult for people to interpret and/or enforce. We believe that the inclusion of examples in the regulations would be of great assistance to the courts, to industry and to those seeking to enforce this legislation. Fourthly, the Democrats believe that the legislation should be split into food and non-food amendments. We say this because we feel the needs of Australian food producers are different from those who manufacture non-food products. We got that distinction in debate within the hearings for the inquiry which was conducted. Quite clearly, those who were concerned about labelling of food products, such as the strawberry growers, had quite distinct concerns to those who were perhaps involved in the TCF industry. Whilst the same provisions will apply to food and non-food products, we believe it is appropri ate to separate those categories within the legislation.As a final point, I would simply like to mention the situation that many people who go into delis or fruit and vege shops are faced with: that is, a cabinetful or bins full of produce with no labels indicating where the produce is from. A good example is the leg of ham that you might see in your deli cabinet. The purchaser has no idea whether that ham is from Australian pork or has been manufactured from imported pork. Whilst the scope of the current legislation does not really allow us to address that problem, I think it is important to put the government on notice that this is an issue that the Democrats and the pork industry and many others are very concerned about. Recent election results in Queensland underline that.Consumers have a right to know where their goods are coming from, and those who want to buy Australian should be given sufficient information to allow them to do so. The concerns I have just outlined all relate to schedule 1 of the bill.In relation to schedule 2, I indicate now that my colleague Senator Murray will also be moving some amendments. Schedule 2 seeks to give the ACCC the power to undertake representative actions in respect of breaches of part IV of the act. Part IV, of course, deals with various restrictive trade practices, such as misuse of market power, unfair trading and secondary boycotts.The House of Representatives committee on fair trading—the Reid committee—recommended that the ACCC be given the power to undertake representative actions, particularly in respect of section 46, that is, the misuse of market power provisions. The committee in its report argued that this power `will marginally improve small business access to justice'.The Democrats support the general proposition of ACCC representative action powers, as recommended by the Reid committee, and broadly support the provisions in the act. But the Labor opposition has raised an important concern with these provisions, arguing that it would also give the ACCC the power to take representative action on secondary boycott provisions—and Senator Neal spelt this out very well in her speech.The Democrats position is quite clear: unless a secondary boycott involves competition issues, we do not believe that the ACCC should be involved and, in fact, cannot see why it got involved in recent industrial action. That was the longstanding policy position of the ACCC predecessor, the Trade Practices Commission, from 1977 to 1996. Not once did the Trade Practices Commission ever engage in a secondary boycott action. Indeed, the TPC made its views known to the Senate employment committee's inquiry into secondary boycotts in late 1993. Its policy stance is the following:It is the anti-competitive class of case that the Commission as a competition authority is primarily concerned with . . . The company damage class of case without substantially lessening of competition is better left to private action.From 1994 to 1996 this position was also reflected in law, with section 45D secondary boycotts in the Trade Practices Act restricted to boycotts involving substantial lessening of competition and other boycotts in the Industrial Relations Act. In 1996 the secondary boycott provisions were transferred back to the Trade Practices Act.In our discussions with the ACCC and the government at the time, it was made pretty clear that the ACCC's primary interest would be in the competition class of the cases. Indeed, one would have thought the objects clause of the Trade Practices Act, which expressly refers to competition, would have restricted the ACCC's role in any case only to dealing with boycotts involving competition issues. However, over the last year, without any public announcement of a change of policy, the ACCC has changed a 20-year policy and started going after secondary boycotts that do not involve competition issues.This, in our view, is an inappropriate use of the ACCC's scarce resources. If a company wants to use the secondary boycott provisions against a union, it should use its own money, not get public funding through an ACCC action. Our amendments will seek to reinstate in law the distinction between `competition' and `non-competition' secondary boycotts, and make it clear that the person suffering the damage must instigate boycott action if there are no competition issues involved.11:57:004872Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—This bill has a long name—it is called the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 —but it has a very short trajectory. The aim of this bill is to deceive Australian shoppers, Australian consumers. This bill aims to allow a whole polyglot of manufactured goods, including those which have ingredients principally from overseas, to have the label `Made in Australia' placed on them. This means there will be hoodwinking of the person going down supermarket aisles looking for Australian made goods because he or she wants to support Aussie made and wants to make sure that not only the manufacture has been carried out in Australia—because that supports Australian jobs—but also that the ingredients come from Australia because that supports Australian bush regions and primary producers.But, as I say, such Australian shoppers or consumers are going to be hoodwinked because, under this legislation—which is a sleight-of-hand and a response to World Trade Organisation requirements to lower barriers—it is possible, in terms of cost, for 50 per cent of a good's manufacture to have occurred in Australia and the label `Made in Australia' to be applied.What does this mean? Consider, for example, a jar of jam or peanut butter. As a percentage of the overall cost, the cost of its manufacture, having been carried out in Australia, is very high; yet the cost of its ingredients, the peanuts, strawberries or raspberries perhaps having been wholly imported, is very low. However, putting the label `Made in Australia' on it deceives people into thinking this is a genuine Australian product when it patently is not.If you have two bottles of cordial on the shelves, one made out of wholly imported raspberries from Chile and the other made out of wholly domestic raspberries from Tasmania, under this legislation both bottles could have the label `Made in Australia' on them, and the consumer cannot tell the difference. I believe that is a scam.This legislation, if the impact of it were known to the wider Australian audience, would be howled down. That is not what Australian shoppers, Australian consumers, want. I have a submission from Mara Bun of the Australian Consumers Association which was presented to the Economics Legislation Committee that looked at this bill. Page 1 of that submission states:We oppose the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 in its current form. We believe that establishing a minimum criterion of 50% of the cost of production incurred in Australia for unqualified country of origin representations breaches the consumers right to truthful product labelling.In simple terms, consumers could think they are buying a wholly Australian product, yet may only get half Australian. Consumers identify not only with the processing or manufacturing as an important element in a `Made in Australia' claim, but also the origin of the ingredients or components of a product. There is ample evidence to indicate this in the food arena.Then they cite three sources. Firstly, they state:The CSIRO's Australian Food Survey (1993) for Edgell Birdseye found that "98% of those asked agreed that food should not be labelled "Australian made" unless it is both grown and processed entirely in this country."Secondly, the SPC funded Quadrant Survey (1994) results indicate:. . . "three quarters of people believe `Made in Australia' should preclude any imported ingredients."Thirdly, the Consumers Association state:The ANZSFA commissioned origin labelling survey of Yann, Campbell, Hoare and Wheeler (1995) found "The term `Made in Australia' is widely believed to be a product which is totally Australian, in terms of ingredients, processing and packaging. The majority (58%) also consider this to be the best description of the term.That is it, pure and simple. Australians believe when they see a label `Made in Australia' or `Australian made' that it means just that. It means that not only the manufacture but also the produce which has gone to the making of the goods is domestic.What Australians believe when they see a `Made in Australia' label is what the government says will be the case when you have a label `Product of Australia'. The problem is that no amount of advertising, certainly not the $1 million to $2 million that the government wants to follow up in its so-called education campaign—it is a re-education campaign—on the Australian people, will separate out in the Australian consumers' minds the labels `Product of Australia' and `Made in Australia'. It will fail because lifelong conditioning to those two labels, which mean very much the same thing, is not going to be altered by a tiny campaign like that. That is window-dressing; that is green washing; that is trying to hoodwink the consumers. Who is it being done for? It is being done for big manufacturers who are dealing in international trade, for people who want to cross international boundaries and stick the `Made in Australia' label on their produce when it is not in large proportion made in Australia. It is going to mean the devaluing of the label. It is going to mean that Australians cannot believe that a product on the shelf which has `Made in Australia' on it means just that. It is going to mean that, every time you see that label, you are going to still wonder where the ingredients come from or how much of the manufacturing occurred in the United States, in New Zealand, in Indonesia or in Japan. You simply will not know.It is my aim to rectify that situation through the Greens' amendments. We will be aiming to keep those two labels which are central to this bill so that the first one—`Product of Australia' or `Produce of Australia'—does mean 100 per cent and nothing else; but the second one—`Made in Australia'—goes close to that as well. Where there is a minor component of ingredients from elsewhere, then the `Made in Australia' label stands, but there should be an indication that the ingredients came from elsewhere—in other words, quite simply, truth in advertising.If the government cannot come up with legislation which embodies the spirit of truth in advertising, how are we to expect manufacturers or people out there in the marketplace, whose profits depend on how they package goods, to have an honour system which goes to truth in advertising? What the government is doing here is dishonest; it is deceptive; and, worst of all, it is aimed at the very people it should be protecting—the Australian consumers, the Australian shoppers.For the life of me, I cannot understand the position of the National Farmers Federation when it says, in its submission to the Economics Legislation Committee, `We want to support this legislation.' I also understand that the National Farmers Federation did not appear before this vital committee. Its submission states:We understand that the amendments will replace the existing essential character test with a combined substantial transformation test and cost of production test—there are three tests in that—to ensure that only genuine Australian products can claim to be `Made in Australia'.Well, they are wrong. The National Farmers Federation is doing the wrong thing by the farmers of this country.Let me reiterate that, if the cost of manufacture is the major component in goods that are being manufactured in Australia and the ingredients are very minor, it is well nigh possible for the ingredients to be totally imported yet for the label to say `Made in Australia'. Let me reiterate, because this is the point of the argument against this legislation, that it is possible to have peanut butter, raspberry jam, blackcurrant cordial and orange juice—a whole range of things—where the ingredients come from overseas but the label says `Made in Australia'. That is not fair dinkum; that is not fair to the consumers, but it is not fair for our Australian farmers and producers.The real advantage they have in this world where overseas costs can be so much lower is the fact that they are producing Australian goods, and the Australian consumers are on side and want to back them. The surveys all show that. What this legislation is doing, with the backing of the National Farmers Federation, is pulling the rug from under that. I simply do not understand it.What about the representatives of the pork industry? My office has rung them in recent days, and the first reaction we got was, `Well, there will be concern if pork can be introduced from Canada, mixed with some Australian pork, turned into sausages and put out as Australian made sausages.' 5F4CALVERTSenator Calvert—They can't do that.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—`They can't do that,' says Senator Calvert.5F4CALVERTSenator Calvert—Pork is made out of fresh meat for a start.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—Let me tell you, Senator, that this legislation is going to enable just that sort of thing to happen. You know yourself that there is a whole range of manufactured meat products, and this legislation is going to give imported meats a distinct advantage because it is going to allow the fib to be peddled, providing that manufacturing costs are a major component here in Australia, that the goods are made up of Australian meat products when they also have imported meat products—even, potentially, a majority of imported meat products. But there is the label: `Made in Australia'.If the consumers out there only knew that this sleight of hand is being used in this legislation, there would be somewhat of a revolt, because it is revolting legislation. I think, if the farmers knew the disadvantage that they were being given in this legislation, they would be appalled. I think also that if the farmers knew that the member for Oxley, Pauline Hanson, allowed this legislation through the House of Representatives without even speaking on it—let alone voting against it—they would wonder how consistent she is about the self-professed mantle of being the protector of the Australian identity. She has failed totally not only Australian consumers, but also Australian farmers and small business by allowing unfair competitiveness for imported goods to be practised through this legislation.The outcome of this legislation is to put Australian manufacturers who do favour Australian ingredients at a distinct disadvantage. At the moment, as a result of court rulings, there is some advantage for manufac turers who have the alternatives of an imported ingredient and an Australian ingredient of roughly the same price—maybe the Australian ingredient is a little more expensive—to take the Australian ingredient, because the very fact that they can therefore put `Made in Australia' on the label gives them a sales advantage.But this legislation is going to bomb that one out.If you look at the government's own explanatory memorandum attached to this legislation, under the heading `Impact Analysis' you see which groups might be disadvantaged by product labelling. You find that the government itself knows that it is firstly the consumers `who desire accurate and useful origin information'. And there in the list—writ large—is also `primary producers'. Why? Well, it is their products that `typically embody high levels of domestic content and may therefore may be disadvantaged in relation to imports as a result of any changes to the law governing origin claims.'What is happening here is that the government is deliberately disadvantaging those primary producers, because it is lowering the barrier, and it is going to allow more and more goods made from ingredients from overseas to be sold in Australian outlets, deceptively, as `Made in Australia'. What appalling legislation, and what an appalling process. I say again, the people out there—and there is not an Australian who is not going to be hoodwinked by false labelling once it is legitimised through this legislation—would be appalled by this legislation. Therefore, I move:At the end of the motion, add: "and that further consideration of the bill be postponed and be an order of the day for the first day of sitting in 1999".That is a very earnest amendment. I have spoken on a number of radio stations around the country in recent days, and the response has been quite extraordinary. When people learn what is built into this legislation, they are appalled. There is quite an electrifying response from consumers.In response to what I have said, we will no doubt have Senator Parer and the government trying to say that it is not so—that really this is a good deal, and that really this is going to help exporters. That is the prime aim of it—to help some big manufacturers in their exporting because the label `Made in Australia' sells well overseas as well.But the concern I have is that the losses are going to far outweigh the gains. By lowering the bar, we are going to devalue the currency in the market that matters most for Australian produced goods, and that is the Australian market itself, the 18 million Australians who consume every day, and the majority of them want to know that, when they see a product with `Made in Australia' on it, it is dinkum and they are not being deceived.In the committee stage, I will be presenting further amendments to tighten up the definitions along the lines of the argument I have been putting forward. If the Greens amendments are not successful—and I hope they are—we will be supporting, in the main, the amendments from the Democrats and the Labor Party, which are weaker than the Greens amendments but certainly far better than what the government is putting forward.The minister should hang his head in shame on this. I would like to see him go out to a consumers group and try to put this one over them. Of course he will not. He might be comfortable with some big manufacturers who want to get an advantage out of this sleight of hand, but he would not do so well at all if he were to meet with a consumers group who had been informed about what was going on here. It is appalling legislation, and I will be voting against it.12:17:004875Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—I will follow on from the comments of my colleague Senator Neal, who spoke earlier on schedule 2 and referred to the sneakiness of the government in slipping this section into the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 . I concur wholeheartedly with all her comments in that area and, as she has addressed that in fair depth, I am not going to attempt to address that today. I am going to concentrate pretty much on the issue of the labelling, which is a very difficult issue in itself, as has been said by a number of speakers here today.The provisions of the bill set out to establish a 50 per cent plus substantially transformed test for the use of the `Made in Australia' logo, establish almost a 100 per cent test for `Produce of Australia' or `Product of Australia' or allow for ministerial discretion to apply a stricter test. That is all well and good. But, if we look at the previous regime, which came under a Labor bill, we find that there was a much tighter test than is being advocated here for the term `Made in Australia'. The now government, the then opposition, was terribly critical of what Labor was trying to do. As I understand it, at that time, it sought by way of amendment in the debate to strengthen the then bill. However, today we find that the government has put up something even weaker by its own standards.It is interesting to look at the complexity of this debate in terms of the minority report in the Senate Economics Legislation Committee report of June 1998. It outlines the complexity which, on the surface, many people are aware of, but it is the depth which they do not understand. On page 14 of the report, two cases have been referred to. In the Bush Friends case, in the decision of Davies J. and in the appeal decision of Nicholson J., it was:. . . viewed that the term `Made in Australia' attached to the toy koala assembled in Australia almost wholly from imported materials was misleading and deceptive.So, in that particular case referred to in the minority report that has been presented to this Senate, it was clearly identified that there is case law that shows that, even where something was assembled in Australia, almost wholly from imported materials, the labelling of it as `Made in Australia' was misleading and deceptive. Even though it had been substantially transformed, it was considered to be misleading and deceptive to call it `Made in Australia'. The second case that is cited in the minority report refers to the Email case where:. . . the Court ruled that airconditioners could be labelled `Made in Australia' despite being constructed significantly from imported components.So one can understand readily the confusion that lies out there in the consumer world where the courts take, on a case by case basis, a different view of this issue. Undoubtedly, as is expressed in the minority report, there is dissatisfaction with this case by case determination as to what actually constitutes `Made in Australia'. The minority report goes on, quite rightly, to say:A balance needs to be struck between the right of the consumer to have access to truthful information on labels and manufacturers and producers desire to use country of origin labelling as a marketing tool.After all, that is what it is in terms of the producers and the marketers. It is a marketing tool. It is something by which they wish to arouse the spirit of people to support an Australian-made product. In that itself, there is nothing wrong. However, what is wrong, of course, is the abuse of such labelling and the deceptive use of such labelling. That is wrong.So, whilst the issue is complex, as seen in that brief excerpt from the minority report, there is no doubt that the legislation that the government is presenting here today will not overcome the complexities. I have no doubt that this will see some difficulties emerging in the longer term which will need to be resolved by the courts because legislating in this area is terribly difficult indeed.I rise to speak in this debate because I have a fair degree of working knowledge of the previous logo that was available and was recognised as indicating that something was made in Australia. My involvement came through the Advance Australia Foundation. I was a member of a Queensland committee of the Advance Australia Foundation. The interesting thing about that organisation was that its sole objective was to promote the `Made in Australia' logo, and to promote a logo that the public could recognise as having a great degree of integrity and one in which they could place their faith.The committee itself was broad based. It was not based on political or other affiliations. It went across industry, unions, government and the community. As a matter of fact, on the committee in Queensland there were a prominent Australian cricketer, a prominent person from the girl guide movement and one from the historical movement. There was a wide range of people, but they all had one purpose in mind: the promotion of the `Made in Australia' logo and the maintenance of its integrity.One problem that the committee was constantly faced with was maintaining the integrity of that logo. There were always people on the fringes seeking to diminish the value of that logo by using some other form of terminology, either to equate to the logo or in some way to link themselves to the `Made in Australia' logo without paying the appropriate licence fees. My experience over a period of about 2½ years was that it was a successful committee. It worked well and actively in a completely bipartisan way to promote the issue throughout not only the business community through retailers but also in the rural and regional areas of Queensland.There is no doubt in my mind that the committee was a success. It ran some very successful campaigns. However, the Advance Australia Foundation was subsequently scuttled by this government on its election to office. To see how successful the foundation was, one need only look at the 1994-95 report of the Advance Australia Foundation. This report, which was tabled in this parliament, contains all the issues that are being raised today by others participating in the debate.On the issue of consumer research, the report says that research was conducted by the Department of Administrative Services during the year, focusing on consumer awareness of the campaign. This campaign was aimed at consumers identifying with the `Made in Australia' logo—the kangaroo. It was undertaken by Taverner Research Company in May 1996—just when the government was contemplating scuttling the Advance Australia Foundation.The survey showed that 74 per cent of consumers buy `Australian Made' mostly or wherever possible. This figure had risen from 50 per cent in 1986. I have no doubt that that can be attributed to the work done in an honorary capacity by people in the Advance Australia Foundation. The survey also identified that 62 per cent of consumers used the `Australian Made' symbol to recognise products made in Australia. One must realise that that label then required a 75 per cent content. In other words, it was not the 50 per cent plus that we are now looking at; it was 75 per cent. It was a label of integrity.The report also said that 86 per cent of the people surveyed said that they had purchased products with the `Australian Made' symbol. The Australian people identified with it, but this government has allowed it to die. Interestingly, the report goes on to say that the Pratt Research 1994 shopping report concluded that Australian consumers are not concerned about the question of company ownership and that, as long as the product is genuinely made here, it is seen to provide jobs for Australians.That was my experience in the Advance Australia Foundation. People saw buying an Australian product as creating Australian jobs and, therefore, it had great value. When the coalition came to office, it cut the funding for the Advance Australia Foundation. That was most unfortunate, as I said earlier. The Advance Australia Foundation report outlines in some detail the promotions undertaken by the foundation in the 1994-95 year. One promotion was an `Australian Made Month'. For three years we have not had a month that focuses Australian consumers on the need to support the purchase of goods made in Australia. We have allowed the issue of how to identify goods made in Australia to lapse.While the government is putting up a proposal today, I believe that proposal is not strong enough to enable Australians to clearly identify what those products will be and are. The Advance Australia Foundation campaign involved the following: a two-week national TV campaign; a major supplement directed to more than 6.1 Australians in Sunday newspapers nationally; extensive regional radio advertising; a variety of promotions run in major shopping centres throughout Australia; and extensive support by Coles supermarkets, which staged a major promotion involving catalogues and in-store displays. It was not done on a penny-pinching budget; it was done with a great degree of focus. The focus was to get Australians to concentrate on buying Australian goods.It is interesting to look at a survey that was conducted by Coles supermarkets and report ed in the 1994-95 Advance Australia Foundation report. Coles commissioned a survey of 451 shoppers. The findings included that a national average of 94 per cent of grocery shoppers preferred to buy local products. So it is already established that there is a preference. It also found that 67 per cent of shoppers nationally believed that Australian food products offered better quality than imports. It also found that 71 per cent of respondents said that they would buy Australian even if the imported product was slightly better in quality and, last but not least, it said that 67 per cent would buy local products even if the equivalent product was up to 10 per cent less expensive.That survey shows that there is a demand out there but the demand relies upon people being able to clearly identify what is an Australian product. This gets to the vexed question that is posed in this piece of legislation. How are we going to be able to successfully label a product such that it can be identified as a `Made in Australia'? The government apparently has said that it will spend $1.2 million in an advertising campaign to enable the differentiation between `Made in Australia' and `Product of Australia'.Whilst that is good, the minority report severely questions how that will in any way go to lessening the confusion that exists out there in the community. Undoubtedly, there is a great deal of confusion in the community at large. Having said that, I do not think this legislation will resolve the problem. The issue is that consumers, tourists, manufacturers and producers want something that stands out and enables them to identify quite clearly that they are dealing with a `Made in Australia' product.For example, tourists want to buy an Australian stuffed koala, stuffed by an Australian with Australian stuff. These people do not want to buy something that has come off the shelf in Taiwan or China and is made to look like a koala. They want to buy the real stuff. That is what it is about. They do not want a multiplicity of categories. They do not want labelling that will devalue the concept of `Made in Australia'; they want something that will enhance it. This is really about appealing to people's pride in purchasing goods that are made in Australia. There is a commercial spin-off: Australian producers and manufacturers will do well, and so will the community through the jobs created. That is what this is about, and that is what it should be about. It should not be about giving access to greater profits to people who want to ride on the back of the title `Made in Australia'.In conclusion, I want to make a brief comment on what the government is going to do with the promotion of the new logo through the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I think that is the wrong body to have control of the handling of this. It should be an independent organisation and not one which is driven by the profit motive and which will be seeking profit out of this logo. For me, it should be placed in the hands of something like the Advance Australia Foundation which is built on broad based community support, so that the community has an input into and say in the continuation of this worthwhile title, `Made in Australia'. It should not lead to confusion. In the end, the government is taking a bandaid approach which will not solve the problem.Sitting suspended from 12.33 p.m. to 1.35 p.m.13:35:004878Stott Despoja, Sen NatashaSenator STOTT DESPOJA3I6SAAD00—I rise as the consumer affairs spokesperson for the Australian Democrats to support some of the comments made by my colleague Senator John Woodley earlier in this debate, specifically in relation to labelling. I would like to extend some of that discussion not only to labelling but to some of the broader consumer rights issues and some of the spin-off effects of labelling, or its impact on the economy.As Senator Woodley remarked, the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 is a belated improvement to existing law, but he also recognised that we consider there are still deficiencies within this bill. It is no secret that the issue of labelling, specifically that of Australian made products, is something on which the Democrats have campaigned long and hard for many years. As Senator Woodley pointed out, the Democrats have private members' bills currently—and have had them previously—before this chamber dealing with the issues of not only labelling generally but `Product of Australia' and `Australian made' labelling.My personal concern about labelling of goods relates to those foods and other goods that are genetically modified in some way. I make it very clear that I think it is the right of all consumers in our society to have goods, foods and other things labelled appropriately, so that consumers can make an informed choice about what they are buying, wearing, using or eating, as the case may be. I am conscious that a lot of that issue is relevant to a debate at another time and I am keen to maintain the dialogue that we have with the government on that issue.The Democrats' concern on this issue relates not only to this government's work on its legislation but to that of the previous government. We had many concerns with legislation put forward by the Australian Labor Party and, more often than not, with the inaction on this issue. I do not pretend that this is an issue that is not complex; it is a significant issue, but it is also a hard and delicate issue. Certainly, the issue of definitions is a hard one to resolve—how we define what is Australian, whether it is made in Australia, whether it is a product of Australia, whether it is manufactured in Australia, and what component parts are Australian made.We have worked very hard to bring this issue to the parliamentary arena, just as we are very conscious that organisations such as AusBuy, Harry Wallace and the Australian Consumers Association have worked very hard to raise these issues in debate in the wider community.The Australian Democrats were one of the first organisations or parties to launch a scheme that looked into better labelling—not only laws but easier ways that Australians could identify Australian made products. Senator Woodley referred to the scheme which ranked products in order of their direct economic benefit to Australia and the Australian economy.There have been private members' bills—one recently from Senator John Woodley and also one from our leader, Senator Meg Lees—dealing with the issue of labelling laws. I look back at some of her speeches when the draft amendment bill on labelling was introduced back in 1992, many years ago now, yet some of the issues are still relevant. She raised these issues in the parliament back in December 1992, during a matter of public interest debate. Some of the issues that she picked up on were products that were labelled `Product of Australia'. A good example that has been given already in this debate is that of tomatoes—the fact that tomatoes in tomato sauce are often imported but because the processing is done here, they can at the moment, under existing laws, be legitimately labelled `Product of Australia'.I know that former Senator Robert Bell gave peanuts as an example on many occasions—the fact that we can go through many jars of peanut butter, and certainly in 1992 we could only find one brand of peanut butter that actually contained Australian peanuts. Nevertheless, all the brands were labelled `Product of Australia'. So we know that this is an issue that is important not only to us but to a majority of consumers, and was important long before 1992. We still seek adequate resolution of this issue. I have noted that there are improvements in this bill but we still think it has deficiencies.In addressing some of the broader issues relating to this bill, there is the fact that what we buy affects our economy. Greater awareness through labelling of Australian made products and goods has the potential to increase investments in our country and the purchasing power of consumers. Senator Hogg in his remarks noted how a survey of consumers showed they were more likely to buy products if they were genuinely products of Australia, even if, in some cases, those costs were greater. We have no doubt that consumers are more likely to purchase those products and therefore increase investment and, presumably and hopefully, jobs in Australia as a result.The Australian Democrats have always strongly opposed the speed with which this government—and of course the former government—cut tariffs, quotas and bounties and went a long way further than our obligations under treaties such as GATT. We are still very concerned about these issues. We think that future international commitments by Australia towards globalising trade should reflect Australia's interests. This is particularly concerning for Australian manufactured products and our agricultural output. This is the primary reason why we want good country of origin labelling.The Labor government was aided and abetted by the coalition in opposition. This led to the decimation of many jobs in Australian industries. It has also made Australian businesses and workers compete directly with overseas wages, which are significantly lower than our own, with no obligation to meet basic employment standards and with no regard to environmental protections and quality of life. I have mentioned before the fact that we measure our economy in terms of gross domestic product, which is a measure of economic activity. It gives number to the value of all final goods and services produced within this nation. In our modern societies we often work out the GDP as a measure of individual worth and wealth. My objection to this, and I think many of my Democrat colleagues' objection—certainly that of my predecessor, Senator John Woodley—is the failure of GDP as a measurement to take into account social components and the failure to indicate the quality of life.We think we should use a range of indicators which give us measures which take quality of life into account. Among other things, this would value household work, time with the family, voluntary and community work and other non-market activities which go towards making our community more inclusive, more tolerant and much fairer. Indicators like the genuine progress indicators and the index of sustainable economic welfare are interesting and worth some consideration. For example, the GPI for Australia has stayed approximately the same since 1975, while GDP has increased significantly. This means we have more economic activity, but our quality of life has not necessarily changed much.In its publication Perspectives on progress: is life getting better?, the CSIRO clearly showed that comparisons of GDP against other indicators of life satisfaction showed increasing GDP and decreasing life satisfaction. They found economic growth only improved quality of life in some circumstances.I am not saying we do not need economic growth; I am saying that there is more to improving our lives than just a positive GDP number. I am saying that we need to investigate some of these other factors more, and include them in our assessments of what is and what is not good policy. I am saying we need to make sure our lives are improving. For example, we should include the environment as a part of our assessment because we value biodiversity, clean air, water and space—how appropriate that the Minister for the Environment should walk into the Senate at this point. These are all directly linked to a declining environment through land clearance, development and a range of other impacts.As a key component of globalising trade and taking these quality of life issues into account, we need to have an efficient and effective method of labelling in this country, because what we buy directly affects our economic activity, and by making choices—this is all we are talking about: ensuring that consumers are able to make an informed choice—we can support our local industries and businesses.Australians want to buy Australian goods to help their fellow workers and to promote Australian agriculture, manufacturing and businesses. We want to know that the product has been produced with proper respect for the employment practices, health and safety, the environment and the peculiarities of Australians and others. We also want to know that a product has satisfied our Australian regulatory scheme.We can do this best with a label that provides accurate information and gives the purchaser enough information to make an informed choice. As I have mentioned, the Democrats have undertaken a number of initiatives to promote labelling. This is an issue of choice and being able to make informed choices. We want to have labels that provide us with relevant information. We welcome, for that very reason, this debate about country of origin labelling as labelling information consumers want and deserve.Briefly, I turn to an issue that I remarked on in my earlier comments: the issue of labelling for the purposes of genetically modified foods. As a political party the Democrats have always maintained that all food derived from gene technology should be labelled as containing genetically modified material, with an identification of the food or the component of that food that has been genetically modified.We believe, again, as part of this broad debate on labelling, that this is an important consumer issue based on a right to choose and the right to make an informed choice. If the outcomes of these types of decisions and debates are the wrong outcomes—and we know that the Australia New Zealand Food Authority, ANZFA, is proposing to introduce a food standard as part of the food standards code—and if we are not ensuring that there is adequate labelling, especially of food that has been genetically modified in some way, potentially the community will be alienated about the use of things such as genetic technology.This is particularly concerning because we increasingly have food, textiles and medicines from genetically modified organisms. Transgenic Australian cotton and soybeans are available to consumers, yet there are few regulatory regimes to address these new products. We must remember that vast amounts of money are being expended on the research and development of transgenic foods and of course there are considerable profits to be made from their sale. These are huge interests, and it is for these very reasons that we must make sure the debate is not overrun at the expense of the concerned consumer voice.The Democrats maintain that the parliament has a role in overseeing the development of such a regulatory scheme in which the com munity can have confidence that their concerns are being heard and dealt with. I do not believe this is happening for labelling, because we are being duped by half-truths and so-called experts. What we need is an inclusive discussion that takes into account the concerns of the community, which will mean that these types of technologies are not forced on us without full recognition of both the good and the bad aspects.To ensure that we actually get the best, we have to consider the options available to us and choose a future that recognises the invoidability of species, the dignity of individuals and the need to preserve naturally evolved life forms in their natural environments. There are bad aspects that consumers have concerns about in respect of these foods or genetically modified products.Some of the consumer concerns I have been advised of include: the chance event of an inserted gene activating or increasing the production of a toxic or allergenic component in the food; the loss of nutritional value in the food; and the introduction of toxic or allergenic substances as a result of the insertion. Consumers have a range of concerns for health and other reasons.Further, the possibility that there could be hundreds of thousands of genetically modified organisms in the environment will threaten our naturally evolved life forms in their natural environments. I mentioned that we have a responsibility to ensure that the cohort of presently existing organisms are maintained into the future, expressing their diversity and unique solutions to biology's challenges. These are a range of areas that have yet to be addressed as part of the broader debate about labelling. They are valid concerns for consumers, and they must be addressed.I conclude by reiterating the Democrats' support for the minor improvements we are seeing in this bill. I add a further comment about the concerns that have been expressed in relation to the ACCC and their representative action powers. I confirm the position that Senator Woodley outlined earlier. I understand that Senator Andrew Murray will be moving an amendment to make the Democrat position clear on this matter. Unless a secon dary boycott involves competition issues, we do not believe that the ACCC should be involved. That was the longstanding policy position of the ACCC's predecessor—the Trade Practices Commission—from 1977 to 1996. I understand that Senator Murray will be moving amendments that reflect our concern about the bill as it is currently outlined and also to make clear our position on this issue.I commend the debate—not just the parliamentary debate but a broader community debate on labelling, and not just on country of origin, although I think that is fundamentally important. From a Democrat point of view, it is certainly high time for that debate. We were wondering how many private members' bills and debates we were going to have to bring on in this place before we saw some progress. Unfortunately, we did not see progress under the former government. We are not convinced that this government has gone far enough, but it is a start and a debate that we welcome and will be strongly engaged in.13:51:004882O'Brien, Sen KerrySenator O'BRIEN8O6TASALP00—I rise in this debate to address the timetable of the introduction of this legislation and matters relevant to the government's response to the concerns of pork producers with regard to labelling of imported product. I do so because there is a rather vigorous debate taking place in public as to what should occur in relation to pork producers in this country.In the pork producers' own publication, The Pork Producer, No. 18, volume 7, July 1998, which I received today, a producer Mr Girvan is reported as saying that the federal government also promised new labelling laws in the last election, but again nothing has come of it. Of course, the government would say that this bill is the delivery of that promise.We are talking about a period of time since March 1996. We are now in July 1998 and well over two years has elapsed. One might think that it would certainly take some time to prepare legislation to deal with this complex area and there would be a need to consult with consumers and industry bodies to get the legislation right. I am sure that is what the government will claim.On 23 March 1994 the previous Labor government introduced the Trade Practices Amendment (Origin Labelling) Bill 1994, which I will call the 1994 bill. That bill had substantially the same purpose as this bill. It was then subjected to inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology which issued a report on that bill in June 1994. It was further subjected to inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs which issued a report on 1 September 1994.There were a number of issues that arose from the 1994 bill which several of the senators who formed part of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs suggested should be the subject of amendment. Indeed, that bill remained on the Notice Paper until the parliament was prorogued in either late January or early February 1996. There had been a great deal of work done in the preparation of the legislation and the examination of issues, and there was consultation with consumers and other parties as to the form of any appropriate legislation in this area. The election was called and, of course, the bill lapsed.Why then does it take this government well over two years to present a new bill? This bill was debated in the House of Representatives in April this year, and, as the government clearly has the numbers there, it received passage. The debate on the bill commenced in the Senate today, that is, on 3 July 1998. This is hardly a bill that the government has given priority to. This is hardly a bill which—notwithstanding the comments this government has made to the pork industry—will be the saviour of the pork industry. I think the government and the industry knows that, notwithstanding the comments that have been made.The first thing that should be understood about the scheme that is being introduced into Australia by this bill is that it is a voluntary scheme. It will only apply where a manufacturer or supplier chooses to represent that Australia, or in fact another country, is the place of origin of the particular goods that the producer is seeking to sell.The bill deals with how the producer or manufacturer represents those goods, as to whether they are made in, produced in or a product of Australia or another country. There are tests laid down as to whether the particular good is substantially transformed in Australia, if it is identified as made in Australia or, if 50 per cent of the costs of production are incurred in Australia, the goods can be described as `Made in Australia'.I do not think it is in any way understating the case to say that this legislation is well and truly overdue. This is legislation—which as I indicated at the start—pork producers expected this government to have introduced well before today. This was an issue on which the government went to the people and said, `We will introduce new labelling laws.' This is an issue on which the government had a substantial amount of work already done for it by the previous government.Yet we are now in July 1998 and only now is the bill in the Senate. It has taken this government over two years to get to this point. I do not believe that even the pork producers believe that this measure will be the saviour. It is interesting to note what they say in their publication which I received today. This is the July edition of The Pork Producer, the official publication of the Queensland Pork Producers' Organisation. Mr Brechin has submitted the following five-point rescue plan to the government:1. Urgent provisional safeguard action for 200 days by the application of a tariff of $2 per kg on imported uncooked pigmeat pursuant to Article 6 of the GATT Agreement on Safeguards.2. A TTQ (Temporary Tariff Quota) for four years on pigmeat imports set at 4000 tonnes at current bound rates of duty with imports thereafter at a duty of $2 per kg following industry agreed public investigation procedures by the Productivity Commission inquiry announced by the Government on June 10, 1998.3. Urgent review of the industry's Exceptional Circumstances relief request under the Rural Adjustment Scheme.4. Commitment by government to ongoing pigmeat industry international competitiveness, structural adjustment and export development assistance over the four-year period of TTQ structural adjustment.5. Establishment of industry/government consultative processes to restore industry and investor confidence.The industry—certainly Queensland producers' representatives—do not see this measure as being in any way critical to the survival of the industry. Of course, it could not be, because the industry is currently in a phase where producers are—as is, I think, very accurately reported in this publication—leaving the industry, selling their herds, selling their property and their homes and getting out if they can find a market for their herds, their properties and their homes in this climate. So I would not want it to be said that this bill represents a dramatic leap forward for these primary producers or, indeed, for any primary producers in this country.This legislation is overdue. I say that this legislation is important. I am not saying that this legislation is without flaw, but I do say that it is overdue. It should have been introduced at least within six months of the last election, given the amount of work that had already been done by the parliamentary draftspeople and by the committees of this parliament. That work was available for this government to build upon, so a bill could have been before this parliament and passed many months before this.Having said that, I do not propose to deal with any of the technical aspects of this legislation; those aspects were well dealt with by Senator Neal and Senator Hogg before me. I also listened with interest to the comments of Senator Woodley and Senator Brown in relation to what they suggest are deficiencies in the legislation. I will be listening with interest to the debate during the committee stage of this legislation.14:02:004883Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I would like to thank honourable senators for their contribution to the debate on this important bill, the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 .The rules governing origin labelling are in need of urgent reform to ensure that consum ers receive accurate, useful information and that Australian producers can market their products effectively. By any standards, the government's proposals strengthen origin labelling rules. We have set a threshold for claims which is higher than any threshold set by the courts or the previous ALP bill. The consumers can have confidence in the integrity of those claims.The issues raised by the Democrats and the Greens mainly focus on food. The government recognises that consumers may have different expectations about food and has asked the Australian New Zealand Food Authority to consider the need for additional regulation in the food sector. This is a more appropriate way to address this issue than using a general act, such as the Trade Practices Act, to set industry specific requirements.I note the Democrats wish to have examples of what constitutes substantial transformation in regulations. The government is happy to meet this request in the compliance guidelines to be issued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.I am disappointed that the Greens have sought to delay this legislation and that they have shown so little understanding of or sympathy for Australian producers. The Greens have sought to introduce impractical amendments to the bill which would prevent products made here, and recognised everywhere in the world as being Australian, being sold here as `Made in Australia'. I remind the Greens that Australian primary producers and the industry strongly support the government's bill and are very much waiting for its early passage. Small business people wishing to use the `Australian Made' logo are also waiting.I foreshadow the government moving an amendment to the bill to address uncertainty about the application of section 50 of the Trade Practices Act to sugar marketing arrangements in Queensland.Adopting a sensible and fair approach to origin labelling consistent with international practice will maximise the opportunities Australian consumers have to identify and buy Australian products to the benefit of local jobs and investment. I commend the bill to the Senate.(Quorum formed)Question put:That the amendment (Senator Brown's ) be agreed to.14:11:00The Senate divided. (The President—Senator the Hon. Margaret Reid)2Brown, B. Margetts, D.*43Allison, L. Bartlett, A. J. J.Bourne, V. Brownhill, D. G. C.Calvert, P. H. Campbell, G.Carr, K. Coonan, H.Cooney, B. Crowley, R. A.Eggleston, A. Evans, C. V.*Ferguson, A. B. Forshaw, M. G.Gibson, B. F. Hogg, J.Kemp, R. Knowles, S. C.Lees, M. H. Lundy, K.Macdonald, I. Macdonald, S.MacGibbon, D. J. Mackay, S.McGauran, J. J. J. Murphy, S. M.Murray, A. Neal, B. J.O'Brien, K. W. K. O'Chee, W. G.Parer, W. R. Patterson, K. C. L.Payne, M. A.Quirke, J. A.Ray, R. F. Reid, M. E.Reynolds, M. Schacht, C. C.Sherry, N. Stott Despoja, N.Tierney, J. Watson, J. O. W.West, S. M.In division—10000PRESIDENTThe PRESIDENT—Senator Woodley, as I understand it, you were one of two senators who called for the division. In those circumstances, you should be voting in accordance with the call.HX5WOODLEYSenator Woodley—I understood that I could abstain. I actually seconded it by mistake. I am always prepared to admit when I make mistakes.10000PRESIDENTThe PRESIDENT—You should be voting as you called, but I will allow you to abstain. This is not to be taken as a precedent.Question so resolved in the negative.Original question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.4885The bill.14:15:004885Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I table a supplementary explanatory memorandum relating to the government amendments to be moved to this bill. This memorandum was circulated in the chamber on 30 June 1998.14:16:004885Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—by leave—I move:(1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 17), omit "If", substitute "Subject to sections 65ADA and 65ADB, if".(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 4 (line 8), omit "If", substitute "Subject to sections 65ADA and 65ADB".(3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 4 (line 20), omit "If", substitute "Subject to sections 65ADA and 65ADB, if".(4) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (after line 3), after section 65AD, insert:54ADA Test for representations that goods are product of/produce of AustraliaIf: (a) a corporation makes a representation that goods are the produce of Australia (whether the representation uses the words "product of", "produce of" or any other grammatical variation of the word "produce"); and (b) Australia was the country of origin of all ingredients or components of the goods; and (c) all processes involved in the production or manufacture happened in Australia;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.65ADB Test for representations that goods are made in Australia(1) If: (a) a corporation makes a representation that goods are "Made in Australia" and (b) all, or virtually all, processes involved in the production or manufacture happened in Australia; and (c) all, or virtually all, of the ingredients or components of the goods originated in Australia;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.(2) If: (a) a corporation makes a representation that goods are made in Australia from Australian and imported ingredients or components (as the case may be), including any representation in relation to specific ingredients or components; and (b) all, or virtually all, processes involved in the production or manufacture happened in Australia; and (c) more than 50% by value of the ingredients or components originated in Australia;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.(3) If: (a) a corporation makes a representation that goods are made in Australia from imported and Australian ingredients or components" (as the case may be), including any representation in relation to specific ingredients or components; and (b) all, or virtually all, processes involved in the production or manufacture happened in Australia; and (c) less than 50% by value of the ingredients or components originated in Australia;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.These amendments go right to the heart of the matter. The Greens are saying `Made in Australia' should mean `Made in Australia'. We are appalled by the prospect of this legislation going through unamended, so that you will have dinkum made in Australia goods having to compete with goods made from large components of imported produce. I give the example of a bottle of cordial. It is entirely possible under this legislation, because the manufacturing costs are a major component, that you could have Tasmanian raspberries going into one bottle of cordial and being put on the shelf and a mixture of raspberries from Chile and South Africa and maybe some from Australia going into a second bottle and being put on the shelf, and both of them will have `Made in Australia'. The consumer will not be able to know which is the real homemade produce through and through and which is the fake.This legislation is legislation in deceit. Consumers deserve to be protected by government, not defrauded by government. But if this legislation goes through all that is required in putting a `Made in Australia' label on your produce, from cars right through to lollies, is that 50 per cent of the manufacturing costs, the transforming costs of the primary products into the manufactured goods, has occurred here in Australia.As I said a moment ago, the 100 per cent manufactured and made in Australia produce is not going to get any advantage through the label. Why is this the case? It is the case because some big exporters want to lower the bar so that they can stick `Made in Australia' on their goods because it gives them an advantage in overseas markets. The Australian market can go to hell. The people walking down the supermarket lanes with their trolleys who look for the `Made in Australia' label, believing it means `Made in Australia', are going to be hoodwinked under this legislation. As the Australian Consumers Association points out, a series of studies in recent years has made it quite clear that, when Australians see `Made in Australia' on an item, they think that means two things: firstly, it has been manufactured and packaged in this country and, secondly, that the ingredients have come from this country.What the government is saying is that for that category we will allow the words `Product of Australia' or `Australian Produced'. The problem is that Australian consumers do not differentiate between the terms `Product of Australia' and `Made in Australia'. They are taken to mean the same thing. People have grown up thinking that both those terms mean roughly the equivalent. They have got it imbued in them.The Greens' amendments which I bring before the committee will make the situation much better at least for consumers. It will stick with the concept of `Product of Australia' meaning 100 per cent manufacture and ingredients, but it will mean that goods that are manufactured in Australia of less than 100 per cent Australian content can have the `Made in Australia' label provided they also stipulate that the ingredients come from elsewhere. It is a simple concept. It is called truth in advertising: don't fool the consumer.If you expect anybody to be upholding this, you would expect government to be doing so. Not so here. What the government says is that 50 per cent of the cost of production is the arbitrating factor for `Made in Australia' and the ingredients in part or in whole, if they are a minor component of that cost of manufacture, can come from somewhere else. It is a simple dictum for consumers: put on the label what the facts are. If you have a product that is made wholly or partly of ingredients from elsewhere, say so. If the shirt has been made in Australia of Indonesian cotton, say so. If that bottle of cordial is made in Australia of Chilean raspberries, say so. If the peanut butter is made in Australia of Chinese peanuts, say so. I say that for a number of reasons: firstly, for the consumers but, secondly, for the sake of the homemade producers. There are two levels. The manufacturers, those who are using totally Aussie goods, should not be disadvantaged by people who are using imported goods in the labelling. Secondly, primary producers in this country who are up against cheap production from elsewhere around the world deserve not to be disadvantaged by not having a label of their own but having to share that with people who they are competing with from overseas.As I said earlier, I cannot understand why the member for Oxley did not pick up on this. But this legislation raced straight through the House of Representatives. She did not raise a finger against it; she did not vote against it; she missed it altogether. That is what the so-called `champion of the Aussie battler' did; she let them down comprehensively. It has now been left to the Greens, through this amendment, to try to get the train back on track.I would be interested to hear the minister attempt to argue his way out of this. I have no doubt that he will be well instructed by the big industries, the corporations, including transnational corporations, whose interests this legislation has been drafted to serve. No doubt he will have some smart arguments. But I ask the committee to keep in mind, when deciding whether or not to support these amendments, that the basis of these amendments is to provide truth in advertising to the people these laws will affect most—that is, the average Australian consumer.14:24:004887Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—I understand a lot of the matters that have been raised by Senator Brown, and many of them I actually agree with. I believe that there are major difficulties in the way this bill operates and how it could potentially mislead consumers as to whether a product is Australian in the sense that most consumers would expect and appreciate it to be. Essentially, as I understand the thrust of the amendments, `Product of Australia' or `Produce of Australia' must be 100 per cent Australian; and the category of `Made in Australia', which is already specified in the bill, should be virtually completely produced in Australia, which I suppose is something very close to 100 per cent.I have said before that the opposition does not intend to impede the progress of the bill or substantially alter it. Because of that, we will not be supporting this amendment. But, as I have said, I share your concerns. The opposition will be monitoring this bill in the future and, if it is necessary, we will make substantial changes to the scheme put in place by this bill.14:25:004887Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—The main thrust of these amendments is to significantly tighten up the criteria for when the labels `Made in Australia' and `Product of Australia' can be used. The Democrats believe that these are important amendments. Consumers need to be confident—they certainly do—that, when they see the terms `Made in Australia' and `Product of Australia', those labels reflect their understanding of what those terms mean.One of the problems the Democrats have had with this legislation right through is that really those two terms are too close together in meaning in the minds of people. It really will be important for the government, in its advertising campaign, to make very clear distinctions so that people understand that there is a clear distinction between the two terms.However, we believe that the threshold the government is proposing, particularly for `Made in Australia', is not sufficient. As such, the Democrats will support these Green amendments.14:26:004887Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—The government will not support these amendments. But what we are doing in this bill is setting a higher standard for `Made in Australia' claims than has ever been set by the courts or any legislation put before this House. For years, a product only needed to have acquired its essential character in Australia to be sold as `Made in Australia', regardless of the Australian level of value adding. This bill provides that, the size being substantially transformed here, the majority of production costs must be incurred in Australia for producers to use the defence provided by the act.This combination of a substantial transformation test and a value added test will prevent simple repackaging or processing being used as justification for `of Australian origin'. By international standards, we are setting a high standard. Many of our trading partners just rely on a substantial transformation test. Setting an even higher test would threaten Australian industry and jobs.Let me just point out to Senator Brown that, if we went along with these amendments in regard to his own state of Tasmania, Cadbury's chocolates would not qualify for the `Made in Australia' test. Let me also point out that, with the best will in the world and with all the hothouses we might have, I cannot see cocoa being grown in the cold state of Tasmania—and it is essential that cocoa is imported for the making of chocolate. So I just make that point.A higher test would mean that very few manufactured goods in Australia, and recognised everywhere in the world as Australian, could be sold here as Australian. Many firms would have to stop using the `Australian Made' logo, costing them opportunities both here and overseas.14:29:004888Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—Does the honourable minister really think that I would let down truth in advertising, as he is doing, for all Australian consumers in the interests of Cadbury's or Holden or any other foreign-owned multinational corporation.KI4PARERSenator Parer—What about Incat or Elphinstone?QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—Or any particular big manufacturer, indeed. And that includes Incat. If Incat is going to have the `Australian Made' label put on it but it has substantial components made elsewhere, then let it say so on the label. That is truth in advertising. What the government is saying is, `We've got friends, powerful friends, to whom we want to accede, who will make more money if they do not have to tell consumers truthfully what the components are—and the purchasers can be damned by deceitful labelling.'The minister said that this is going to be the most stringent labelling test ever. He is, in his own way, deceiving this committee by saying that. His own explanatory memorandum says that the court rulings on the relevant provisions of the Trade Practices Act are, in a restricted manner, resulting in many firms, including many current `Australian Made' logo licensees, being potentially excluded from labelling their products as `Australian Made'. His own advice to this parliament is that the current tests are too tough, as levied by the courts, and we are going to lower the bar. That is what we are doing in this legislation.Through the chair, Minister, you know that is what you are doing. Whatever else you have to say, please hop to your feet and explain to the committee and the people of Australia why the government will not support this Greens amendment which says, if a product made in Australia has components from elsewhere, it should say so on the label. That is the test. Otherwise, you are, with intent, moving to deceive the purchasers of goods manufactured in this country and, by the way, moving to deceive the purchasers of goods made elsewhere. As you know, this labelling rule is going to apply to goods made in China, made in New Zealand and made in the US.The real impulse for this legislation is coming from the World Trade Organisation, it is coming from globalisation, it is coming from economic rationalism. The big players want to abolish the advantage of the small players who are producing totally Australian made goods by using the label on their goods which are not totally made in this country. If the goods are manufactured in Australia, let the label say `Made in Australia'. But if the components come from elsewhere, let the label say, `Made in Australia of goods imported from so and so, of components coming from elsewhere as well as Australian components.' That is not too difficult.You cannot expect that the Australian purchaser is not intelligent enough to deal with that. Minister, what you are doing here is quite wrong. It is quite unfair. It is cheating on Australians. You might want to bring in Cadbury and Incat and somebody else to try to say that what I am doing here is anti-Tasmanian, but let me tell you it is not. I am thinking about the consumer. I am thinking about the people who have one vote and one opportunity to express their feelings about what they think parliament is doing.As we know, at the moment, there is a very big debate raging about whether politicians have their ear to the ground or not, whether they are listening to what the people are saying or whether they are simply influenced by some vested interests, far removed from the Australian people and not doing the right thing by them. If ever there was an example of just that happening, it is in this legislation. Far from raising the barrier, this is lowering the barrier. The outcome is going to be consumers who feel cheated, who do not feel they can trust labelling and who do not feel that they have the trust in their legislators to ensure that they are not being deceived.14:34:004888Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I will just respond very quickly. Senator Brown knows quite well that `Product of Australia' is the term that covers things that are totally manufactured in Australia with Australian ingredients—that is, 100 per cent Australian or close to it. `Made in Australia' is the other term that picks up goods which are substantially transformed in Australia, which are essentially Australian in character. As I pointed out earlier, for years a product only needed to have acquired its character in Australia to be labelled `Made in Australia', regardless of its level of Australian content. Irrespective of what Senator Brown says, this government is setting a higher standard for `Made in Australia' claims than has been set by the courts or by any legislation before this chamber.14:35:004889Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—The minister can glibly stand and say that, but, as I pointed out earlier, his own documentation gives the lie to it. Or, to put it another way, what he is telling the committee is just not right. The minister can get up and say, `This is making it tougher on manufacturers,' when he knows his own documentation says it is not. It is lowering the barrier. It is allowing people to put this label on their goods who would not be able to under current circumstances. He can get up and say, `This is going to be in the interests of Australian manufacturing,' when he knows it is not. It is going to particularly disadvantage the small players, the job intense small businesses, which use totally Australian derived produce. And he can say that this is going to put stricter labelling on goods in supermarkets and elsewhere that Australians purchase, but he knows that that is patently not the case.This legislation is here in the interests of big corporations which move goods all around the world and which are finding it tougher and tougher to get totally Australian made produce into their goods because they can simply import the produce from elsewhere. Talking about my home state of Tasmania, look at pulp—5F4CALVERTSenator Calvert—You weren't even born in Tasmania. You masquerade as a Tasmanian. You were born in Victoria. Tell the truth. You weren't made in Tasmania.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—The honourable senator from Tasmania, who wants to flood even the Liffey River where I live in Tasmania, has had a stab at guessing where I was born. I was actually born in Oberon in New South Wales. He is so far off the mark, but I will not get diverted by that sort of cheap politics.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN (Senator Knowles)—That is a very wise move, Senator Brown. Address your remarks to your amendments.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—I will if I am not diverted by disorderly interjections like the senator opposite has just served up. What I was saying about pulp is that, due to the failure of successive Labor and Liberal governments in Tasmania to put strings on the arrangements they had made for handing across Tasmania's forests, including National Estate and World Heritage valued forest, to the big woodchipping corporations and then the biggest of them north selling off its downstream manufacturing concerns to Amcor, Amcor is now to close the pulp mill at Burnie with the loss of 300 jobs.KI4PARERSenator Parer—This is not about labelling. Stop rabbiting on.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN—Senator Brown, I ask you to address your remarks to the amendments you have moved. I am sorry to suggest to you that the comments you are currently making have nothing to do with the subject before the Senate.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—Well, Chair, you are wrong, and I object to you entering this debate. You have to give me time to develop my argument.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN—Senator, excuse me, I am not entering the debate. I am asking you to keep your remarks to the subject before the chamber.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—I take great objection to that. You allow me to develop my argument, you listen to it and then make your judgment, but do not cut in in the middle.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN—I would ask you not to threaten the chair. I would ask you to continue your remarks according to the subject before the chamber.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—I will do so, and I will continue from where I left before that unwarranted interjection, following the interjection from your colleague on the government benches. Understand that, Chair.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN—Excuse me. You will not threaten the chair. You will address your comments to the matter before the chamber.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—I will not threaten the chair, but I will seek understanding from the chair.10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN—Continue your remarks according to the matter before the chamber.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—I will continue my remarks if you allow me to, Chair. As I was saying, because successive parties, including the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, handed across the forests in Tasmania to pulp companies like Amcor with no strings attached, they are closing their pulping facility with the loss of hundreds of jobs. That puts us in the situation where Amcor is going to import Indonesian pulp, and it said so, if you read the papers. Under these circumstances, if that pulp is a minor component of the cost of manufacture of paper coming out of their facilities in Burnie, they would still be able to put `Made in Australia' on that paper without any caveat that it is made of Indonesian pulp and it has been at the expense of 300 Tasmanian jobs. That is my argument. It is a valid argument and it is an important one. No wonder the government wants to intervene.The point I am making is that you can substitute Australian made ingredients for imported ones and then legally, if these amendments do not stand, put the label `Made in Australia' on those goods and fool Australians into thinking that this is Australian produce when in fact it will be Indonesian produce. That is the argument. That is the key to the reasoning behind these amendments which I am putting forward. If the minister wants to say that there is some moral justification for allowing that circumstance to pertain, to fooling consumers in that fashion, let him do so. But I maintain that there is no valid argument against the motion that the Australian Greens have moved. I can do no more than appeal to the sense of defence of the consumers in putting forward these amendments. Amendments not agreed to.QD4BROWNSenator Brown—Would you record my support for those amendments?10000TEMPORARY CHAIRMANThe TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN—Yes. Senator Brown, it goes without saying; you moved them.14:43:004890Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—by leave—I move:(1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 22), omit "50%", substitute "75%".(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (line 2), omit "51%", substitute "76%".Democrat amendments Nos 1 and 2 are a fall-back position from the amendments which were just defeated, because we do believe that what Advance Australia did in requiring a 75 per cent threshold of the cost of production was in fact right, as Senator Hogg pointed out in his speech. I found it very helpful when Senator Hogg pointed that out to me because I did not know that. What we are doing here is at least going to that position.The government's proposal in this bill is that the term `Made in Australia' can be used where the product has been substantially transformed here in Australia and at least 50 per cent of the cost of production occurred in Australia. The Democrats believe that this 50 per cent threshold is too low and that 75 per cent is a more appropriate level. Again, as I just mentioned, Senator Hogg pointed out that that was the threshold that Advance Australia used. Setting a higher cut-off will provide a greater level of credibility to the product that has the `Made in Australia' label. As I said in my speech on the second reading debate, it will also provide a boost to local producers.14:45:004890Carr, Sen KimSenator CARRAW5VICALP00—Before this debate is closed, I want to raise a related matter concerning the use of the `Made in Australia' logo. A constituent who came to my office last November was concerned about the use of the logo for a product that he had developed and designed himself. He wanted to use the `Made in Australia' logo. He sought assistance from the Victorian Office of Small Business in trying to obtain permission to use the logo. They told him that a company called the Advance Australia Foundation had a copyright on the logo and that he would need to contact them directly.They provided to this constituent a telephone number for that organisation. When he rang the number, the person who answered advised him that the Advance Australia Foundation had closed 10 months earlier—that is, from November last year—since the Commonwealth government, I assume, had removed funding for that organisation. Many people were referred from the Victorian Office of Small Business to this private business. Small businessmen told us on several occasions that this had occurred. The number being used by the office of small trading was no longer valid.My office has sought redress through the Victorian Office of Fair Trading. It sought clarification on these matters and was given exactly the same advice. The same telephone number was provided to my office. My office has rung this number and spoken to the person referred to by many others. This person explained that the Advance Australia Foundation had not existed for many months prior to this advice being provided.We raised this matter with Minister Jan Wade in Victoria last December. To the best of my records, we do not appear to have received a reply. I have no doubt that the minister in Victoria would be only too happy to correct me if that information is incorrect. We do not seem to be able to get any satisfaction out of the Victorian small business department.I ask whether it is possible for the Commonwealth minister's office to take this issue up and seek some redress. It seems to me appalling that there is no facility in Victoria. The constituent who raised the original concern with me said that he could find no means in Victoria by which to make use of the `Made in Australia' logo for his product. I ask the minister to take the matter up and, if possible, provide me with any information on this question.14:48:004891Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I will give a brief response. The previous government funding was directed to the marketing of the logo and not to the foundation itself. My understanding is that the Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill that we are now debating will provide the legislative certainty necessary to rejuvenate the `Australian Made' logo scheme. I understand that the scheme suffered as a result of legislative uncertainty created by cases such as Bush Friends and Unilever. The government is now working with industry to develop a new framework for the operation of the `Australian Made' logo. The scheme includes new guidelines and rules that business must meet to carry the logo.As part of this process, industry discussions have been held to assist in the development of new arrangements for the scheme. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has played a leading role in progressing industry consultations on the future of the scheme. The bill contains a provision to allow for the prescription of, particularly, country of origin logo schemes. The Department of Industry, Science and Tourism is working with industry to determine the costs and benefits associated with prescribing the `Australian Made' logo under the TPA. Where a logo scheme is prescribed under the TPA, the legal evidentiary burden will fall to the user of any such logo. The effect of that arrangement is to ensure that the prescribed logo scheme conveys accurate, useful country of origin information to consumers.14:49:004891Carr, Sen KimSenator CARRAW5VICALP00—I have one follow-up question. How long does the minister anticipate that that process will take? When will businesses, such as the one owned by the constituent who came to me, be able to get some satisfaction in terms of the complaints they have raised?14:50:004891Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I am advised that industry is progressing this at the moment with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. We expect that it will be towards the end of the year.14:50:004891Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—I have another question on the same matter. Minister, you may have mentioned this earlier and I missed it: who currently owns the copyright to the `Australian Made' logo? Is that being transferred to ACCI?KI4PARERSenator Parer—The Commonwealth owns the trademark for the logo.7L6Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG—Is that currently being licensed to any operators throughout Australia? How do you use it?14:51:004892Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—It is retained as a trademark by the Commonwealth and will be licensed when that situation is resolved with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.14:51:004892Carr, Sen KimSenator CARRAW5VICALP00—Does that mean that at the moment it cannot be used?KI4PARERSenator Parer—It is being used, but they are facing some legal risks. This is one of the things that will help in this bill.AW5Carr, Sen KimSenator CARR—Who do businesses apply to to get access to the use of that label?14:52:004892Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I understand that the person is very keen to get this logo. My advice is that they take it up with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Melbourne.14:52:004892Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—I must say that the comments being made by the minister really show that both he and the government have very little understanding of how the gold and green kangaroo operated and how the Advance Australia Foundation operated. He has tried to tell us that in fact there was some problem with the courts' interpretation of the use of the logo and that this was the reason why it stopped operating. In fact, the Advance Australia Foundation and the logo that it administered were popular, effective and operating well until the election of this government, when, in an act of spite, because the program was commenced by a Labor government, they cut the small amount of funding—$1.5 million—that was provided to the Advance Australia Foundation.As a direct result of this government's decision to end that funding, the Advance Australia Foundation went into liquidation. They made numerous public statements during that period about the reason why this was occurring. This government, despite representation not only from the foundation but from industry that had utilised the logo and thought the program was operating well, refused to change their mind.What has happened subsequently is that the government has allowed those people who were already licensed by the Advance Australia Foundation to continue using the logo. That was an interim measure to save those people from possibly being in breach of the licensing of the logo. Because there is no organisation presently established to administer the logo—the Commonwealth has not set up anyone else yet—there is in fact nowhere you can go at the moment to apply to use the licence unless you already had it before the Advance Australia Foundation went into liquidation.I know there have been negotiations between the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the government. The chamber of commerce gave evidence at the hearing held about two weeks ago as to the sorts of consultations they had been conducting—and, I have to say, solely with industry; they had not consulted with consumers at all—and that they were in the process of setting up a memorandum of understanding between themselves and the government as to how the `Australian Made' logo would be administered.I sought a copy of that memorandum of understanding and was told that they would have to consider it because they did not know whether it could be a public document yet. I may have received it subsequently but, if I have, it has not come to my attention. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry cannot administer that scheme until that arrangement between themselves and the government is finalised and, from what they said, it will be some time—probably more towards the end of the year—before it will be finalised. So I think it is quite misleading of the minister to get up in the Senate and say that those who are interested in being licensed under that logo should approach the chamber of commerce now, because they really are not in a position to be able to offer a licence at this time.14:55:004893Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—Is there a licence fee currently for the `Australian Made' logo? If so, how much is it, to whom is the money paid, and who does the actual approval? Is there an approval process?14:56:004893Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I will respond to both comments. I would just like to reiterate that the previous funding went to the marketing of the logo, not to the administration of the foundation. As Senator Neal quite correctly pointed out, the foundation itself went into liquidation.As it now stands, anyone interested in the logo should apply to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. At this stage they cannot get the logo. They will have to wait until the arrangements have been sorted out with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Senator Hogg, you asked a question as to whether there is a licence fee. I have asked my adviser that question and have been told that we will have to check that. My understanding is that the foundation got its funding from some sort of a percentage of the sales of the logo.14:57:004893Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—Minister, I would also be interested to know whether those people or organisations that were licensees, say, three years ago, have continued to pay the licence fee in that intervening period—between then and now—and, if so, to whom have they paid it?14:58:004893Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I am now getting to it, Senator Hogg. The licence fee was not paid to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth held the trademark, but the foundation itself charged a licence fee, and that is where it raised its money.14:58:004893Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—My question is: has there been a licence fee paid by those who have used the logo for the last three years? If so, do we know where that money has been paid? Has it been paid to the now defunct Advance Australia Foundation?14:58:004893Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—My understanding is that there has been no licence fee paid since the foundation went into liquidation.14:59:004893Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—So can one assume, Minister, that there are licence holders out there who have been gaining the benefit of the Advance Australia logo over the last three years and have not been subject to, or paid, a licence fee for the use of that logo?14:59:004893Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I understand that that is correct. The foundation itself went into liquidation in August 1996, and I think there has not been any fee paid by those people since.14:59:004893Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—With the passage then of this legislation and the management of the logo by the ACCI, will there be any retrospective charges on those licensees who have used the licence for the last three years? Will there be any continuing licence fee for those who may have purchased it from the Advance Australia Foundation?15:00:004893Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I do not think so. It must be remembered that there has not been any promotion since the foundation went into liquidation. Part of its role was to promote the Advance Australia logo.15:00:004893Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—Just to clarify that, there will be no retrospective charge, but will there be the raising of a new charge, given that some of those may have purchased the use of the logo from the foundation a number of years ago, and some of them may well have purchased it for a five- or 10-year period? What will be the situation?KI4PARERSenator Parer—I understand that they paid annual fees. With the new regime coming into place, there may well be a different arrangement, and that arrangement is not yet in place, as I mentioned earlier.7L6Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG—If there is a new arrangement, who will work out the terms of that new arrangement? Will that be worked out between the government and ACCI or what process will be used? Could you enlighten us?KI4PARERSenator Parer—It would be between the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism and ACCI, but ACCI apparently is bringing in a lot of other member organisations as well.7L6Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG—Could you give us some idea of the organisations that they will bring?KI4PARERSenator Parer—Textile, clothing and footwear, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the Australian business chamber. Apparently, there is a list in the ACCI submission to the committee.15:02:004894Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—I understand once again the position of the Democrats and their concern about the fact that items that might be labelled `Made in Australia' would require only 50 per cent Australian material. I noted the minister's earlier comments when he said that the majority of material had to be Australian. When I went to school `majority' meant 50 per cent plus one. I do not know whether that is strictly accurate. Despite that slight variation, we do not intend to amend the bill at this stage. We think the way in which it is constructed has major difficulties but, as we stated before, it is an improvement on the present situation. We will re-examine the position of `Australian made' labelling after the election when we are in government, and we will amend it if necessary.15:03:004894Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—I have a direct question for the minister. Will a manufacturer in Australia who has half the costs or more coming from the manufacturer in Australia be able to put `Made in Australia' on a jar of strawberry jam—the strawberries having been wholly imported from somewhere else?15:04:004894Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—It will also have to pass what we call a substantial transformation test. As an example, if you bring in an orange concentrate and just put water in it, that does not satisfy a substantial transformation test.15:04:004894Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—I go back to my example. If a jar of strawberry jam with totally imported strawberries has been substantially transformed in Austral ia, will it have the label `Made in Australia' on it?KI4PARERSenator Parer—I think it is spelt out as a substantial transformation and 50 per cent of the production costs.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—I will try again. If 50 per cent of the transformation costs are borne in Australia on a jar of jam which is made totally out of strawberries which are imported, can the label `Made in Australia' be put on that jar?15:05:004894Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I am not sure what the cost make-up is, because the cost is made up of a whole range of things, as you would be aware. There is the labour that is involved in Australia. It is not just the strawberry ingredients, there is the packaging, the Australian sugar that goes into it and any other things they put into strawberry jam to make it edible.15:06:004894Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—What the minister is ducking—and anybody listening to this will hear it straight off—is the conclusion that, yes, a jar of jam made totally out of imported strawberries, with the manufacturing done here in Australia, with the substantial transformation cost that he talked about, can have the label `Made in Australia'. That is all. It is a complete deception. The same will apply to other goods. It is deceiving to people moving down the supermarket lines who want to know, when they see `Made in Australia', that the strawberries have come from Australia. It is quite wrong that that has occurred. I received a note today from a resident of Adelaide who talks about a tuna sandwich. She lives very close to Port Lincoln, of course, the huge tuna fishery. She says:Why, when I go to the supermarket, can I not buy a tin of tuna made in South Australia? The tin shows `Product of Thailand'. I have at the moment a Greenseas tin labelled, `Canned in Eden, New South Wales, from imported and local fish.' Imported from where? What are the health regulations of the unknown country from which it is imported? The lid has `dolphin safe' written on it. How do I know that the unnamed mysterious country cares a toss about dolphins?She goes on to say that maybe now that the Japanese market is down, she will be able to find some Australian fish in the cans. That woman is giving us a very clear indication of the fear that people have that the labelling is not going to be dinkum. She is obviously a shopper who wants to buy produce made in Australia.The problem I have just outlined with this legislation is that it is quite feasible that she will be buying cans of tuna which are labelled `Made in Australia' but although the production costs are incurred here in Australia, the contents of that can could largely come from somewhere other than Australia. That is a real potential.15:08:004895Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—Regarding the strawberries, or other berries, if they are totally a product of Australia, if the sugar comes from Australia and they are manufactured in Australia, they will be labelled `Product of Australia', and you know that. It is the other definition that we are talking about and that you are trying to confuse. Tuna have a habit of cruising around the high seas. They do not know boundaries. You are saying to me, if some of our very good fishermen pick up tuna on the high seas and come into Port Lincoln where the tuna is canned, the term `Made in Australia' or `Product of Australia' cannot be used, or you are trying to say to me—to give you a hypothetical example—it is okay if an Australian vessel brings in tuna, but if another vessel brings it in, it comes from another country; yet the tuna are caught on the high seas. It does not make sense, Senator.15:09:004895Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—What I am trying to explain is that, if the tuna is brought into Australia by Australian fishermen to Port Lincoln, people expect that it is okay that the can be marked `Made in Australia', but if the tuna is caught in Thailand and canned in Australia—KI4PARERSenator Parer—They don't get caught in Thailand. They are all caught on the high seas.QD4Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWN—Wherever. Under these rules, it can be labelled `Made in Australia'. Let me go back again to your attempt to weasel out of the argument about the strawberry jam. Yes, I said at the outset, if it is made of Australian strawberries, it can have the label `Product of Australia' on it, but if it is made out of strawberries which come from elsewhere, it can have `Made in Australia' on it and sit on the shelf of the supermarket and Australian consumers are not going to tell the difference. You are trying to say that the consumer in the supermarket is going to think differently about the labels `Product of Australia' and `Made in Australia'. Well they do not.The Australian Consumers Association has pointed that out through surveys done not by them but by corporations which sell food in this country. Your effort to spend $1 million or so on an education campaign in the next year is not going to change one iota the feeling by Australians that either label—`Made in Australia' or `Product of Australia'—means that they are getting dinkum Australian produce. Under this deception, people who reach for products on the shelves labelled `Made in Australia' are not going to know where the ingredients came from.Amendments not agreed to.15:11:004895Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—I move:(7) Schedule 1 item 1, page 5 (line 13), at the end of section 65AE, add ", and may include examples (in relation to particular classes of goods or otherwise) of changes which are fundamental changes for the purposes of subsection (1)".The Trade Practices Amendment (Country of Origin Representations) Bill 1998 provides that, to use the `Made in Australia' tag, a product must have been substantially transformed within Australia. This will require a fundamental change in the form, appearance or nature of the goods. The legislation in its current form provides that regulations can be drawn up prescribing changes that are not fundamental changes. The Democrats believe that the regulations should also provide examples of what do constitute fundamental changes. This amendment will simply mean that it is explicitly stated in the regulations that such regulations can be drawn up. There is permission there, rather than a requirement.In trying to draft these amendments, the advice I got from the drafting office was that it really needs to be a permission, that if the government vote for this, then they should take it seriously. We would hope that this could be a signal to the government and to the department that examples should be provided to assist the courts, industry and others who may be seeking to interpret this legislation. That is what we are seeking to do.We have heard already in the Senate the debate about interpretation. We believe that if the regulations clearly indicated perhaps 50 examples of where products with the `Made in Australia' logo have been substantially transformed and there is 50 per cent of the cost of production, that would provide a standard or a mark against which courts could assess the judgments that they make. We are asking the government to take this one on board because we believe it would be a device that would make the legislation far clearer when it comes to disputes about interpretation. That is what we have been having for the last half hour or so in this place, and I am not sure that we arrived at any decision.So we are saying to the government: accept this amendment—it is simply asking you to do something—then do it and it will help with the interpretation when we do come to those disputes—which I presume inevitably will occur—if, in fact, we have had that debate already in the chamber.15:14:004896Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—We are happy to give you examples of the ACCC guidelines. The industry is used to this approach; it is not a problem for them. We are happy to do that, but we do not support the amendment.15:14:004896Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—I asked the government what their position was earlier and I have not really had a response. Being told that you do not support it, is not a very convincing argument. Are there any reasons why you do not support it?15:15:004896Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I understand that the rules are being looked at by the WTO and within the next two years they expect them to be formalised, so we just want to make sure that they fit in with those. They will have examples across the board.15:15:004896Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—If it is the case that the government is waiting for the rules of the World Trade Organisation—is that what you meant by `WTO'?15:15:004896Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I understand the test is already used in our customs law and in the customs law of all other countries.15:15:004896Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—Could I get an indication from Labor whether they are supporting this amendment?15:16:004896Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—I am trying to get to the base of the government's objection to see if there really is a reason not to support this amendment, because after having had some discussions with Senator Woodley it seemed, though not momentous in impact, quite reasonable. Being a cautious person, I am wanting to ascertain from the government if there is any real problem with this amendment.To me the amendment seems to give the government scope to provide grey to deal within the regulations. It only uses the term `may'; it does not say that the government has to include that extra examples in the regulations. I cannot understand—it being an optional extra, as it were—why it would be a problem. So I will give the government another opportunity to explain what difficulties may arise. If they cannot provide that to me, I cannot see why the opposition would not support this amendment.15:17:004896Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—Sorry about this. I think Senator Woodley is talking about examples of substantial transformations. Is that correct?HX5WOODLEYSenator Woodley—Yes.KI4Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARER—But substantial transformation varies from item to item. It would be different for a shirt than for a heavy piece of equipment that might be made by Elphinstone, for example, down in Hobart where they use a Caterpillar engine and build a piece of machinery to send to the mines. The WTO will bring up a classification and will do it on a very detailed item-by-item basis. I think I mentioned earlier that we can give some specific examples, which we are happy to do in the ACCC guidelines.10000ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Crowley)—The question is that the amendment be agreed to. Those of that opinion say aye, those against say no. Is a division required?15:19:004897Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—by leave—I am advised that, if this is required in the bill, we will have to change the bill, which would prevent passage of the bill.10000ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT—I will put the question again. The question is that the amendment be agreed to. Those of that opinion say aye, those against say no. Is a division required? Ring the bells.A division having been called and the bells being rung—10000ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENTThe ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT—Is it the wish of the committee that we call off the division and call it for the ayes? There being no objection, it is so ordered.Amendment agreed to.15:21:004897Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—I move:(8) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (after line 13), after section 65AE, insert:65AEA Components or ingredients of goodsFor the purposes of this Division, goods includes ingredients or components of goods in respect of which individual representations as to country of origin are made.The Democrats believe that labelling for products should include the ingredients of that product and the country of origin of each of those ingredients. This amendment is the first step in moves towards that goal. The effect of this amendment will be that, where a corporation makes a claim about the country of origin of an ingredient, then that claim will be subject to the provisions of this bill.As I said, it is only an initial step, but we believe it is an important one. I might add that again I took advice from the drafting office. This is a very minimal step, but it is underlining to the government that we really do want truth in advertising and that the provisions of the bill should apply in this instance.15:21:004897Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—My understanding of amendment No. 8 is that it deals with the classic example of a hamburger being sold and it being advertised that the meat in the hamburger is from a particular country, for example, Australia. At the moment this legislation seems to only deal with the whole product. If that is correct, I cannot see any reason why this should not be supported to ensure that the ingredients of a total product be covered, as well as the entire product.15:22:004897Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—Any products where a claim is made that is false or misleading—as I understand it and I am advised—are already covered by the Trade Practices Act. If you claim it is an Australian ingredient and it is not, the Trade Practices Act applies.15:23:004897Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—Yes, I understand that the provisions of the Trade Practices Act do apply. If you make a false or misleading statement then action can be taken against you. This bill says that, if you comply with this particular labelling regime, then you are protected from having action taken against you.It is my understanding that, unless this amendment was agreed to, the situation could arise where a component of a product could be advertised as being Australian or made in Australia, but in fact it was only 50 per cent Australian meat. In that situation you could be prosecuted for being in breach of the provisions of section 51, even though you would have complied with the regime that applied to the whole product. That is my concern. That is why I saw some merit in the Democrats' proposal.15:24:004897Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I understand that it does not add to it. It is just superfluous to what is already available. That is my advice.Amendment not agreed to.15:24:004898Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—by leave—I move:(3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (after line 16), after Subdivision A, insert:Subdivision AA—Goods other than food(4) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 16) to page 5 (line 3), relocate sections 65AB, 65AC and 65AD to page 5 (after line 16), before the heading to Subdivision B and renumber as sections 65AD, 65AE and 65AF.(5) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (lines 4 to 16), renumber sections 65AE and 65AF as sections 65AB and 65AC.(6) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (line 16), after section 65AD, insert:Subdivision AB—Food65AFA General test for country of origin representations in relation to food(1) If: (a) a corporation makes a representation as to the country of origin of goods; and (b) the goods are food; and (c) 75% or more of the cost of producing or manufacturing the goods (as the case may be) is attributable to production or manufacturing processes that occurred in that country; and (d) the representation is not a representation to which section 65AFB (product of/produce of representations) or section 65AFC (prescribed logo representations) applies;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.(2) In this Division, food means: (a) a substance used, or capable of being used, as food or drink by humans; and (b) a substance used, or capable of being used, as an ingredient or additive in, or in the preparation of, a substance referred to in paragraph (a).65AFB Test for representations that food is product of/produce of a countryIf: (a) a corporation makes a representation that food is the produce of a particular country (whether the representation uses the words "product of", "produce of" or any other grammatical variation of the word "produce"); and (b) the country was the country of origin of each significant ingredient or significant component of the food; and (c) all, or virtually all, processes involved in the production or manufacture happened in that country;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.65AFC Test for representations made by means of prescribed logo(1) If: (a) a corporation makes a representation as to the country of origin of food by means of a logo specified in regulations made under subsection (2); and (b) the food has been substantially transformed in the country represented by the logo as the country of origin of the food; and (c) the prescribed percentage of the cost of producing or manufacturing the food (as the case may be) is attributable to production or manufacturing processes that occurred in that country;the corporation does not contravene section 52 or paragraph 53(eb) by reason only of making the representation.(2) The regulations may, in relation to a specified logo, prescribe a percentage in the range of 76% to 100% as the percentage applicable to goods for the purposes of paragraph (1)(c).These amendments give effect to the Democrats' desire to see separate provisions in this legislation for food and non-food goods. In large degree, these amendments arise from a concern expressed to the Economics Legislation Committee inquiry by the Victorian Strawberry Growers Association. They argued that the needs of Australian food producers are different to those who manufacture non-food products. As such, these amendments simply seek to separate those categories within the legislation.In the inquiry, after speaking to the people from the textile, clothing and footwear industry, it was quite clear that their requirements for labelling were quite different to the requirements of growers and manufacturers of food, et cetera. At the moment the conditions are the same, but it makes it much clearer if you separate within the legislation these two categories.15:26:004898Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—It certainly was true that there were particular concerns raised in relation to food products, both at the hearing and in discussions that the opposition has had with various consumer groups. The very obvious producers who are affected are concentrated orange juice manufacturers, pork producers and strawberry growers. All those people, who are largely primary producers, raised a concern that, by allowing an item to be labelled `Australian Made' when it was only 50 per cent, could encourage our manufacturers to bring in that primary produce from overseas, particularly when it might be cheaper.There are two matters that concern me. It is difficult when you are trying to get the simplest and most straightforward scheme in place to have different percentages applying to different products. To some extent it is almost as confusing for consumers to have different levels apply to different products, as the concern they might have about food produce.Again, I understand the concerns, but I do not feel that to substantially amend some portion of the bill in an ad hoc way is appropriate, when there seems to be general dissatisfaction amongst consumers, and perhaps the bill at large is the appropriate way to go. Again, in any major monitoring and review of this scheme, we may need to amend this area, but at this stage we do not propose to support the Democrat amendment.15:28:004899Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—I cannot swallow that argument from the Labor Party. This Democrat amendment goes a substantial way towards improving the legislation, which will allow all manner of food goods with ingredients imported into this country, to be sold under `Made in Australia' labelling. Senator Woodley's amendment raises the bar from 50 per cent to 75 per cent. That is an excellent thing. It is not as strong as the Greens' amendment, which I failed to get through here a short while ago, but it is an excellent step in the right direction.I say to Labor that it is not good enough to have consumers waiting on the prospect of a return to a Labor government. Now is the opportunity to improve consumer protection through this amendment and we should be taking it. It stands on its own merits. To simply say that it allows for two classifications, one for food and one for other manufactured products, and that that is not a good thing, is not an argument that can be carried through.This will improve the labelling when shoppers are buying food. It will mean that many more products that get the `Made in Australia' label, or a better proportion of them, will have dinkum Australian ingredients in them. That is the test. That is why this amendment should be supported.15:29:004899Hogg, Sen JohnSenator HOGG7L6QLDALP00—I have a question for Senator Woodley: can I assume from the amendments that you have moved that it is only 75 per cent in respect of food, but that it is 50 per cent of other goods? You have accepted that you have lost that?15:30:004899Woodley, Sen JohnSenator WOODLEYHX5QLDAD00—I perhaps should make another explanation because these amendments catch up with an earlier amendment. They repeat that for food it would be 75 per cent rather than 50 per cent, but for other products it remains the same. It divides out food from other products.15:30:004899Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—The Trade Practices Act is a general act that covers all products; it does not differentiate, as you appreciate. We appreciate that consumers often have higher expectations about the labelling of food products. The government has therefore asked the Australian New Zealand Food Authority to examine whether additional labelling requirements should apply to food. That is the right body to ask. This will, we believe, ensure that any additional concerns about food can be accommodated within the new labelling framework.15:31:004899Brown, Sen BobSenator BROWNQD4TASAG00—Really? So we give New Zealand the veto over `Made in Australia' labelling? That is what the minister has just said. What a terrible situation. This is a matter of determining truth in advertising. Consumers in Australia look for the label `Made in Australia'. Why hand that across to a veto by New Zealand representatives on some commission which is not representing people in this place? Why should the minister be able to put that across to a commission involving another country, albeit our friends in New Zealand? They have interests at stake here as well. What does their legislation say? Is the minister going to tell the chamber what regulations protect `Made in New Zealand' labelling in that country? We are talking about `Made in Australia' here.Senator Woodley has brought forward perfectly good amendments to ensure that consumers will know that, when they see `Made in Australia', at least 75 per cent of the total cost of that production will come out of Australian manufacturing and ingredients. They are good amendments and they should be supported.Amendments not agreed to.15:33:004900Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—I move:(1) Schedule 2, page 11 (after line 19), after item 2, insert:2A Subsection 87(1A)Repeal the subsection, substitute:(1A) Without limiting the generality of section 80, the Court may: (a) on the application of a person who has suffered, or is likely to suffer, loss or damage by conduct of another person that was engaged in (whether before or after the commencement of this subsection) in contravention of a provision of Part IVA, IVB or V; or (b) on the application of the Commission in accordance with subsection (1B) on behalf of one or more persons who have suffered, or who are likely to suffer, loss or damage by conduct of another person that was engaged in (whether before or after the commencement of this subsection) in contravention of a provision of Part IV, IVA, IVB or V;make such order or orders as the Court thinks appropriate against the person who engaged in the conduct or a person who was involved in the contravention (including all or any of the orders mentioned in subsection (2)) if the Court considers that the order or orders concerned will compensate the person who made the application, or the person or any of the persons on whose behalf the application was made, in whole or in part for the loss or damage, or will prevent or reduce the loss or damage suffered, or likely to be suffered, by such a person.This amendment has been circulated. The purpose of this amendment is to repeal the subsection and substitute:(1A) Without limiting the generality of section 80, the Court may: (a) on the application of a person who has suffered, or is likely to suffer, loss or damage by conduct of another person that was engaged in (whether before or after the commencement of this subsection) in contravention of a provision of Part IVA, IVB or V.I will not go through the detail of it, simply because of the time factor—I am sorry about that—but I would like to proceed with this bill, if we could. I think that amendment has been circulated throughout.15:34:004900Neal, Sen BelindaSenator NEALB36NSWALP00—The minister did not actually tell us what this amendment does. It is my understanding of the supplementary memorandum that has been circulated that it is a consequential amendment in relation to items III and V of schedule 2. We oppose both these items; therefore, we do not intend to support this consequential amendment. The opposition will be opposing it.15:35:004900Murray, Sen AndrewSenator MURRAY3M6WAAD00—I wonder if the minister will explain something about this particular amendment. I notice that, at the bottom of amendment sheet AD370, the date is given as 19 June 1998. I had the impression it was circulated very recently. Is that so?15:35:004900Parer, Sen WarwickSenator PARERKI4QLDLPResources and Energy10—It was circulated on 30 June, if my memory is correct. I think I mentioned that in my wrap-up at the second reading stage. The government's amendment to subsection 87(1A) is a drafting refinement which is consequential on the amendment to the following subsection, 87(1A)(b), which contains the authority for the ACCC to take representative action.15:36:004900Mackay, Sen SueSenator MACKAY9L6TASALP00—I would like to make a number of points about this amendment. First of all, the fact that there has been very little consultation with the opposition parties with regard to this is an indication of precisely what this goes to. I notice that the minister fairly glibly in his explanation glossed over a number of issues that this and further amendments relate to.This is about the power of the ACCC to take further action, and retrospective action, with regard to unions. It is symptomatic of the type of approach that the government has taken with the waterfront dispute that this sort of thing is just slipped in. What we have here is at best disingenuous; at worst—this is probably the reality—it is duplicitous in its intent.I noted with some amusement when I was going through the second reading speeches by both Minister Parer and Minister Truss—which are, of course, the same, that the miscellaneous amendments are described thus:The bill contains a number of miscellaneous amendments. Two of these amendments deliver major reforms promised in the Government's New Deal: Fair Deal package. One amendment will extend the ability of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to take representative actions on behalf of small business. The second amendment will provide for the appointment of a full time commissioner with a background in small business. Both amendments will enhance the capacity of the ACCC to assist small business.That all sounds very reasonable until you actually look at precisely what it is going to do. I notice that my colleagues in the other place made lengthy comment about this, particularly Mr Martin, the shadow minister for small business. In his contribution he made it very clear that, when this section went through in the package with regard to fair trading, it was indicated by the government that it was a matter of assisting small business, yet there were a number of things that the government did not enact, particularly the national uniform retail tenancy code. Class action by small business would have been made a whole lot easier if that had been introduced, but the government chose to ignore the backbench recommendations. We pursued those amendments in the other place and we did not succeed. What has become known colloquially as the Reid report did not make any formal recommendations about retrospectivity in this respect, and Minister Reith has never mentioned retrospectivity in any contributions he has made.We now see the agenda writ large with these amendments. We see it writ large in the waterfront and we see it writ large in the conspiracy that has now empirically been proven between the government and Patrick's on the waterfront. We see the ACCC pursuing—she says with some irony—an assiduous approach in the maritime union. We are concerned that that is precisely what this goes to. It is no surprise to the opposition that this type of amendment is simply slipped in under the guise of a bill with regard to labelling. The reality is that this is not what the government says it is. This is not simply about assisting small business. As I said, that type of approach would be at best disingenuous.7L6HOGGSenator Hogg—Sneaky.B36NEALSenator Neal—Underhanded.9L6Mackay, Sen SueSenator MACKAY—Yes, sneaky and most certainly underhanded. Clearly Professor Fels and the government have displayed what their essential intentions are in the restrictive practices provisions, something that the opposition and the fair trading inquiry could not possibly have foreseen. I will not do this in detail because time does not permit, although I could, but one could examine the sad and sorry story of the waterfront dispute, the plot that was hatched and so on.I mean no disrespect to the minister here, but I just do not think it is good enough to come in here and blithely try to brush this aside as a small business initiative when clearly it is not a small business initiative. As I said, and I think Mr Martin made the same point in the House of Representatives, the underhandedness of this provision is compounded because of the government's failure to implement a uniform retail tenancy code, which makes it almost impossible for small businesses in most states of Australia to organise themselves into a collective force when negotiating with recalcitrant landlords, which was the issue there.Let me enlighten the Senate as to precisely what both this and the further amendment would do. They would enable the ACCC to take representative class action for anti- competitive conduct. On the face of it, in the glib and disingenuous way that both ministers have described it, this sounds fairly reasonable, but it is not that. It has ramifications for the MUA and for organised labour in general. With regard to small business, representative class action can already be taken in terms of unconscionable conduct, under part 4, and consumer protection, under part 5. It can be argued that if the government intended this class action to apply to small business they should have included it in the fair trading bill, which would seem to be the most appropriate place to do it. Here again we have to genuinely question the motivations of the government in terms of the mechanism they have used for those amendments.The fair trading amendments to the Trade Practices Act, which were carried in April, already have the following capacity for small business in relation to the ACCC:The government's approach will strengthen the substantive legal rights available to small business against unfair business conduct and, as well, improve enforcement of rights and access to remedies for small business. The government will achieve these objectives through legislative amendment of the Trade Practices Act in four areas: a new provision that will give small business genuine access to protections against unconscionable conduct; a new provision that will allow industry designed codes of practice, in full or part, to be prescribed as mandatory or voluntary codes, and enforced under the act; a new provision which allow the ACCC to take representative actions against misuse of market power; and a new provision which will give small business interests equal importance to consumer interests when appointments are made to the ACCC. Strengthening the Trade Practices Act in the above manner will provide for open and fair competition, which is a key focus of the act.That is an excerpt from Minister Reith's second reading speech. The reality of this initiative of the government in the broad is that it will enable the ACCC to take representative actions on matters of alleged contravention of part 4, which includes sections 45D and 45E—the secondary boycott provisions, as they are known—of the Trade Practices Act. At present, the ACCC's powers to take such action are limited, and I will not go into the sections of the act there.The reality is that this will allow the ACCC in a retrospective manner to legally pursue any union involved in legitimate industrial action once this bill has passed, and do so on a much more unfettered basis. The amendments are completely unrelated to the primary purpose of the bill and, as I said before, they are sneaky and underhand in terms of helping the ACCC in, to say the least, a partisan approach with regard to pursuing the MUA. That is what it is about. It is about adding more legislative and retrospective power to the ACCC. This has already been exposed. As I indicated before, why are more powers not being given to the Trade Practices Commission through the Trade Practices Act with regard to the pursuing of anti-competitive practices on the wharf not associated with the union—for example, monopoly control by port authorities, which is something the government has not turned its mind to.Progress reported.Adjournment490210000PRESIDENTThe PRESIDENT—Order! It being 3.45 p.m., I propose the question:That the Senate do now adjourn.490215:45:004902Forshaw, Sen MichaelSenator FORSHAW656NSWALP00—I rise on the adjournment this afternoon to relate some concerns regarding the administration of the Sutherland shire, an area which is well known to senators. On occasions in past adjournments I have had reason to raise issues, the most notable of which being the decision of this government to consider the Holsworthy airport as a possible site for Sydney's second airport.As honourable senators will know, the citizens of the Sutherland shire reacted very forcefully against that proposal by the Howard coalition government and managed to change the government's mind. But on the very day in September last year when the federal government announced that it was no longer considering putting Sydney's second airport, a 24-hour international airport, at Holsworthy, within the bounds of the Sutherland shire, it announced that it proposed to locate a new reactor at Lucas Heights. Senators and the public are all aware that there is a reactor located at Lucas Heights. It was constructed in 1958 and has now just about reached its use-by date. It must close down and commence decommissioning by the year 2004.This coalition government decided, notwithstanding recommendations by a previous review conducted by Professor McKinnon, that a new reactor should be built at the Lucas Heights site. I have said before that there was little, if any, consultation with the local council. There was virtually no consultation with the residents of the shire. Rather, the government simply announced that that was where the new reactor was going to go and the people of Lucas Heights and the rest of the shire would have to put up with it.Whilst it is conceded that, when the reactor was first built in 1958, it was considered to be remote bushland and many people have since moved into that area and have had to naturally accept that they were living within the vicinity of a nuclear reactor, that is no reason to say to them, `If you have put up with it for 50 years, you should put up with it for another 50 years.' I would venture to say that, if there was not a reactor at that site now, considered once remote but no longer remote, no government of any political persuasion in its right mind would think of putting a reactor there.I raise this concern again this afternoon because there is a campaign being conducted by environmental groups, by citizens of all political persuasions within the Sutherland shire against the government's decision. Quite rightly, they are entitled to put their views to the community and to their elected representatives. I might say that that campaign is being conducted in a most appropriate, responsible and peaceful manner, and involves the preparation and dissemination of much written material putting the case on behalf of those who are opposed to a reactor. ANSTO, which operates the Lucas Heights facility, has at its disposal millions of dollars to promote its case for a reactor.I go back to where I started: the Sutherland shire council. When the decision was made last year by the Liberal-National Party government to build the reactor, the Sutherland council shire president at the time, Mayor Schreiber, expressed his disgust at that decision. Within about a week he changed his mind, and the Sutherland shire council changed its longstanding policy. It has been opposed to a new reactor at Lucas Heights for many years and has raised its concerns about issues of waste storage and disposal. But the council now is under the control of the Liberal Party councillors, and it was interesting that, within a couple of weeks of the announcement, the Sutherland shire council reversed its position and said that they now support a reactor. The local state and federal members from the Liberal Party in that area have also indicated that they support another reactor being located at Lucas Heights, quite contrary to the longstanding policy position of the Sutherland shire council and other representatives of the community.What is also of concern is that the council very recently decided to ban the availability of anti-nuclear reactor literature in the Sutherland Shire Council library. We are all aware of what happened during the war years and the Cold War: totalitarian regimes set out to ban the availability of knowledge to people—commonly called `book burning'.But here we have a council, the Sutherland Shire Council, in the City of Sydney deciding to remove from its public communications area material available to the public putting the case against a reactor. These were publications produced, for instance, by the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre. As is the case in public libraries all over this country, community groups are given the opportunity to put material in a library and, provided it is not offensive, it is available for people to look at.When this decision was made, complaints were lodged with the council. The general manager of the Sutherland Shire Council, in a letter to one of the Labor councillors, stated: Reference is made to your Request No: 13075 concerning the placement of `anti-nuclear reactor' material in Council libraries.Following Council's decision of 1 December 1997 to support the Federal Government's proposal to construct a replacement reactor at Lucas Heights contingent upon a full and open comprehensive EIS, the Mayor took the decision that material opposing the reactor should not be displayed at Council libraries.This decision was based on the fact that the display of such material in Council premises would not be in line with Council's stance on the issue.What greater example of political censorship could there be than for a council, in 1998, in what we understand to be a free and open democratic society, to take the decision to prohibit in its public libraries the availability of any material opposing a decision of the council, particularly on such a major issue—that is, whether or not there should be a nuclear reactor located within that area. How would honourable senators and members of parliament feel if the Parliamentary Library here in Canberra were only ever allowed to produce and make available material that was in line with the government's position on any issue? It would be disgraceful. People have a right to have available to them the arguments put by both sides on any major issue, such as this one. I find it disgraceful that Sutherland Shire Council took this action.In fairness, subsequently, a week ago, the council reversed its decision because of the media outcry and because of the complaints made by the Labor councillors on the council. But the original decision prohibiting the availability of such material should never have occurred, and it concerns me when our supposed democratic institutions stoop to such censorship. (Time expired)15:55:004905Senate adjourned at 3.55 p.m.