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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1576 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

Mr Humphries said this morning that this was simplistic and was not providing a solution. We are not saying that this is going to provide a solution. This is a stop-gap measure in order to allow the Government to come up with a proper retail strategy in the ACT to protect local shops and to protect small business. In no way are we suggesting that this is a solution in itself. It is merely to stop retail trade in the ACT going in the wrong direction. If Mr Humphries has an opportunity to amend this motion as he sees fit, I would encourage him to do that, rather than to throw it out altogether.

Mr Humphries: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Ms Horodny has quoted from what she claims is a Liberal Party document or something that shows that we were going to move for a moratorium. In the last Assembly we did move for a moratorium on town centre expansion. I would ask that she table that document.

MR SPEAKER: Will you table the document?

MS HORODNY: I do not have the document with me, but I will do that.

Mr Humphries: Because it is not in existence, that is why.

MS HORODNY: I am sorry; I will look into that.

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I have to press the point of order. Does Ms Horodny intend to table the document or not?

MR SPEAKER: Yes. She did say that she would table the document.

MS HORODNY: I will. Let us be clear about the nature of the proposed expansions of these town centres. The purpose of these developments is not ultimately to provide more choice to ACT residents; each shopping centre is just trying to entice customers to move their shopping activity from other centres to their own. The new shops that are brought in are often not independent small businesses. Usually they are just another branch of a national shopping chain. If you walk through any of these malls you will find the same shop names, the same food outlets and the same stifling atmosphere. Is this really providing competition and diversity for shoppers?

What about jobs and profits? If we keep expanding these town centres we will have no local shops left. That is the way that we are going at the moment. We will send more and more of our profits out of the ACT and we will lose jobs. If we are talking long-term job security for Canberrans, this will not be by having more and more major chains. We should all know by now the statistic that, for every 3.9 employees that are made redundant from small business, on average, only one is being re-employed by the large chain-stores. I believe that there is substantial support in the community for measures which will protect local shops. Our community does not want to see the big shopping centres grow to such an extent that the local shopping centres die. We know that over 30,000 people supported the save our shops campaign at the last ACT election.

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