Whatever happened to a level playing field?

Media Release

21 February 2007

With the Government at most levels encouraging individual enterprise, applauding a level playing field and spruiking the benefits of competition and the free market, it would appear to be quite hypocritical for Government at another level to be using its powers to curtail customer choice and coerce people into using a particular product.  But that is exactly what seems to be happening to one of our local businesses.

A lot of new homebuyers buying houses in unsewered areas have to provide their own wastewater treatment systems.  In one local government area with a separate council and water authority, the water authority approved a development proposal that specified a particular brand of treatment system and the council then approved the development.  A prospective purchaser asked the water authority whether they could arrange for a different treatment system with the same technical specifications --provided by our local supplier with local service backup --and were told that they had to use the particular brand.  That brand, by the way, is manufactured overseas and supplied by a Sydney-based company.  In another local government area where there is no separate water authority, the council took a similar approach in terms of "encouraging" the prospective purchaser to install a particular brand of water treatment system that would be supplied and serviced by council.  Once again, our local business is effectively cut out of the market by the actions of bureaucrats.

Is this consistent with the general trend to hand public services over to private enterprise in the name of "free markets" and competition that is supposed to benefit consumers? It strikes me otherwise:  if the product of our local supplier has exactly the same technical specifications and does exactly the same job, why should our local residents not be able to take advantage of the unit being supplied locally for the same price or even less, and with the added advantage of prompt, efficient and cost effective servicing by people who supply the product?

Small businesses have enough to deal with in today's competitive environment without government bodies dictating policies or "preferences" that reduce their ability to compete in, or completely cut them out of, parts of the market they operate in.  One wonders about the real motivation of the bureaucrats who use the power of officialdom --by "persuasion" or "encouragement", if not by outright demands --to rob consumers of their free choice and to rob local businesses of the opportunity to compete on a level playing field.