Page 3249 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 November 1992
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MUTUAL RECOGNITION (AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY) BILL 1992
Debate resumed from 15 October 1992, on motion by Ms Follett:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.05): The Liberal Party supports the Government's Bill to introduce mutual recognition of goods and services. The Chief Minister referred in her tabling speech to the national scheme for mutual recognition of regulatory standards for goods and occupations as a major step forward in the achievement of micro-economic reform. She said that the Bill involves recognition by all governments that the creation of a national market is timely and that it ends a century of parochialism. I cannot agree more with those observations.
Micro-economic reform was essential in 1990 to transform the divided national economy, with all its inherent economic inefficiencies, into a single free trading, freely accessible market. I supported the mutual recognition proposal at the Brisbane Special Premiers Conference to pursue that end. It is consistent with Liberal Party policy. The national economy needed then, and still needs, uniform business legislation to reduce the costs associated with doing business throughout Australia. Reform of the disunities between the States retains its potential to stimulate the growth of business and employment. It should encourage an expansion of business activity as small regional businesses take advantage of the opportunities that a larger uniform national market would provide.
Unfortunately, the micro-economic reforms that held out so much promise in 1990 have been too long delayed. The recession produced by the policies of the Federal Labor Government has undermined the benefits that could have flowed from those reforms over the past two years. But those reforms, gradually being put into place, will eventually bring about the anticipated rewards. The mutual recognition of goods and services regulations will encourage businesses to look outside their own regions to secure tradeable stocks and to offer their services. In the long term that flexibility, greater choice, potential business growth and more cost competitive goods and services will benefit the regional economy and people living in the ACT. But it will do that only if local businesses and professionals look to competing on a national level. Locally, the business of promoting the Canberra region will take on a greater importance as local producers compete to maintain or improve their local market shares.
Madam Speaker, while I am in favour of this legislation and the micro-economic reform agenda, I am surprised that the context in which this reform was originally raised appears to have either fallen by the wayside or taken a much lower profile than was desirable. I refer to the development of a system of uniform standards for goods and services as the preferred option, with mutual recognition being an interim stage in achieving that approach, and, in the long term, a facility available to take care of minor issues not requiring attention in uniform national standards. The timetable for introducing mutual recognition has been adhered to, but the wider, more permanent and more desirable national uniform standards have not been progressed at the same pace.
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