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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Bills

Local Government (Mobile Food Vendors) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is going to behave himself now, because he knows there are really important people watching us.

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (12:28): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I always try to behave.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You try but you often fail.

Mr KNOLL: Sometimes we fall short of the lofty goals and standards we set ourselves. I love a good mobile food van. Over the last few months during the break, when sitting at home on a weekend looking after the kids while my wife goes out for some precious alone time away from the children, I came across a movie on Netflix called Chef which stars John Favreau and Sofia Vergara.

It is a story about a chef who gets fired from his fine dining restaurant who ends up reconnecting with his son and finds himself by starting a mobile food truck in the US, travelling all through the US city by city, sampling and creating sandwiches using the local produce. We are talking about southern fried chicken, smoked meats and all sorts of wonderful things. It really helped him to re-engage his passion in food and ever since that time I have been hooked on the concept.

Food vans are a fantastic new way of operating and presenting food. Certainly it has sparked a level of entrepreneurial spirit that I think is to be commended, but the idea that this piece of legislation helps food vans is wrong. The idea that we need to support innovation with more regulation is wrong. In my time in this place—and, fair enough, it is only 2½ years—this has to be perhaps the most useless and ill-considered piece of legislation that has been brought before this parliament. I think the member for Kaurna has been listening to too much early nineties rap music, humming along to Warren G and Nate Dogg's Regulate as he thinks about new ways to innovate or intervene in our economy.

The central premise here is that somehow government regulation is the answer to businesses succeeding. On this side of the house, we fundamentally disagree with this concept. I was debating last year on radio with the member for Kaurna and we were talking about levels of insecure work within our economy and within our society. He talked about it as though it were some sort of new phenomenon and certainly the internet has helped to burgeon the level of insecure work and people who are working for themselves within our economy.

The idea that we have not had sole traders in home care services or in trades for generations means that those opposite do not understand how our economy is made or how increasingly more and more people are finding work within our economy. The truth is that his ignorance in this area, and the Labor government's ignorance, extends to this piece of legislation. The idea that mobile food trucks are some sort of innovation that just sparked up in the last couple of years is wrong.

In fact, the first mobile food van was actually licensed in 1871 and was drawn by a horse to Victoria Square. At that time, we did not call them mobile food vans; we called them coffee stalls or pie-carts. According to The Advertiser, there is some conjecture that the first pie-cart appeared outside the old Bowman Building in King William Street in 1876 but, either way, 1871 or 1876 is when we had the first mobile food van here in Adelaide. To think that somehow this is a new—

Mr Picton: Then why don't you support them?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, member for Kaurna!

Mr Picton: Why don't you support them?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr KNOLL: Interestingly, through the depression many of these pie-carts and mobile food vans failed and by 1958 only two remained. The reason we should all know that mobile food vans have existed forever is that they have created an iconic South Australian dish called the pie floater. This is a delicacy that is unique to South Australia and was actually recognised by the National Trust of Australia as a South Australian heritage icon.

Interestingly, here is another point that we came across in our research: here we have the Labor Party, which is trying to be the saviours of mobile food vans, yet it was actually the government's tramline extension that caused the Balfours' pie-cart to fail and to close outside the Adelaide Railway Station.

Mr Picton interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Kaurna is called to order.

Mr KNOLL: Interestingly, the last of the old style pie-carts was Cowley's and it closed in October 2010. The National Trust believe this was the longest serving food venue in the state until its closure.

What I find most interesting about this is: why now? If pie-carts and mobile food vans have been able to operate in Adelaide since 1871, why is it that now the Labor government decides that it is time to act? The reason is that they need to look like they are doing something. The hamster wheel needs to look like it is turning. The truth is that, if we go back to the fundamentals of our economy, we are doing extremely poorly when it comes to business growth, population growth and employment growth. We are doing abysmally.

The government comes along with this spurious piece of legislation designed to try to convince people that they are here for small business and entrepreneurs when all they are doing is creating extra legislation and extra regulation. The idea that these two things logically go together is fundamentally wrong. What if the Labor government was actually serious about helping mobile food vans or helping the entire economy, which I think would probably deliver some better benefits. They could then help to deliver some policy settings that would actually fix some of the issues we have.

Recently, in the last couple of weeks, a figure came out that says that our population growth is only 0.6 per cent compared with 1.4 per cent nationally. The best thing we can do for food trucks in South Australia is to have a growing population, with more people here with more money to spend who are going to need to feed themselves more That is going to deliver increased demand for mobile food vans.

The second thing we can do is actually tackle our 6.6 per cent in trend terms unemployment rate. If we were to get that unemployment rate down, we would have more people in jobs, more people with disposable income who could go and eat at one of these beautiful food vans. Heaven forbid that while they were eating at some of these mobile food vans they may be able to go and eat at many of the other establishments that exist around South Australia.

In the last few days, I think all of us have had comments from existing operators about the fact that they want us to support this piece of legislation. What they need to decouple is the fact that support for mobile food vans as an industry is served by this bill. Those two things do not go together. The Liberal Party are huge supporters of mobile food vans, but the truth is that none of those people who emailed us needed this piece of legislation to succeed. All of them talked to us about their success stories, and they were exciting. They speak to a potential hope for the future in South Australia, but they did not need this piece of legislation in order to succeed.

What could this Labor government do that would actually deliver real benefits to mobile food vans? First of all, they could look at payroll tax. They could also agree with the Liberal Party and realise that ever-increasing levels of emergency services levy are going to punish small business operators across South Australia. They could look at the cost to all South Australian businesses of council rates or indeed electricity prices, which are the highest in the country in South Australia and would be an input to every single business in South Australia.

If the government really wants to help mobile food vans, it should start fixing some of the fundamentals, instead of coming in here with an ill-considered piece of legislation that does nothing except increase costs across the board. In true Labor style, this is what I believe that they believe business needs; that is, every time private enterprise is out there doing what it does the government believes that government regulation is the answer, that somehow private enterprise cannot do things when left to their own devices and that what they need is an all-seeing and all-knowing bureaucracy to help them on their way.

The most fundamental difficulty I have with this bill is that it does not reduce regulation—it does not reduce regulation. First of all, will a mobile food van have to apply for fewer permits under this bill? No. They will still need to go council by council and get separate permits. Does this bill help to reduce the number of times a mobile food van will have to pay for a permit? No. That still needs to happen council by council. Does this bill mean that they only have to have one food inspection? No. It does provide a method whereby councils can agree, but the truth is that that is not enforced at this stage, at least as I understand it, and so mobile food vans will still have to go council by council, getting a separate food inspection.

All that has happened here is that the Labor government wants to force councils to do redundant work and then force those councils to subsidise one business model over another. That is essentially what is being done here. This bill puts a burden on local government, which may never have had an application for a mobile food van, to actually go out and map its entire council area, make that available to the public and develop a policy in this area.

What that means is that councils are going to have to create more bureaucracy, create more regulation and ask their councils to consider the implications of this bill when they may never even give one application. Within three months, this needs to be done. What happens then if a single mobile food operator comes to that council? That council has done all this work to benefit potentially one business and you do not think that they are going to try to find ways to make sure that that one business pays for the huge amount of work that this bill puts upon them?

It is absolutely disgraceful—absolutely disgraceful and completely ill considered. Instead of waiting for mobile food truck applications to individual councils to dictate where work needs to be done, once again we have a centralised, one-size-fits-all approach that asks every council across South Australia to do a heap of work that they potentially do not need to do. Again, I think this comes back to why this is such an ill-considered piece of legislation. I really want to talk about the fact that, in the regulations that have been given to us, the cap that the regulations sitting under this bill will seek to put on individual councils is fundamentally wrong because this business model comes with some issues.

When a mobile food truck pulls up and parks on the side of the road, it parks on a road that a council is maintaining. When the rubbish that comes from somebody buying a takeaway container from this mobile food van is put into a bin, it is the council that will have to come and pick up the rubbish from that bin. If the customers of the mobile food truck use the amenities, if available, that are within the area where the truck is parked, it is the council that will have to clean those amenities. These are real costs, and these are potentially increased costs directly resulting from this business model.

There are other business models whereby those businesses have to look after those costs themselves. I am fortunate enough to come from a family business that has a heap of businesses of exactly this type where we have to look after our own rubbish collection. We have to look after, in potential circumstances, paying towards the amenities that are provided, and we have to pay council rates that go towards maintaining the infrastructure that exists around the premises that we use.

I am not saying that we should burden private enterprise with a cost that does not exist, but this cost does exist and it does need to be recovered. What I think we should be trying to do here in South Australia is not preferencing one business model over another but helping every single South Australian business to be able to achieve and reducing costs for every single South Australian business. These costs I am talking about will vary from council to council, depending on their individual circumstances. To take away the ability of councils to have the ultimate say in how they will deal with these issues goes to the heart of what is wrong with a centralised, one-size-fits-all approach to government.

I am extremely proud to be the member of a Liberal Party that stands up to oppose nonsense legislation. I am extremely proud to be able to stand up with a party that stands for lower regulation. I am proud to be part of a party that will actually do real things in government to lower the cost of doing business in South Australia as opposed to doing things that makes the hamster wheel turn faster and hoping that South Australians do not notice what is really going on in our economy.

The truth is they do know what is going on because they are the ones who are out there finding it difficult to find a job. They are the ones who are paying their ESL rates or council rates, or paying electricity prices or water prices from these fundamentally overvalued assets. They are the ones at the coalface who are feeling the pain, and what they get from their government—their tired, 14-year-old Labor government—is a piece of legislation that pretends to be something it is not, that pretends to hide what the real situation is and, indeed, is fundamentally one of the reasons why we have an economy in the state it is in.

I would say to those opposite: we are entirely consistent with what it means to be Liberal when we oppose this bill—entirely consistent. The difference is we do not want to look like we are changing our economy for the better: we actually want to change our economy for the better. It is like when this government wants to put out a budget and a tender for advertising to help change the perception of high unemployment in this economy, which is an absolute disgrace and a waste of taxpayers' money.

What we on this side of the house want to do is actually fix the unemployment rate in our economy by doing things that will stimulate real jobs. In order to stimulate those real jobs, we need to lower the cost of doing business for all businesses instead of cherrypicking. I am extremely proud to be opposing this bill, and I am very proud to stand with a party that does exactly the same. If the Labor Party wants to bring back something that will actually help fix the fundamental structure of our economy here in South Australia, I am sure we will take a good look at it and support it. Where they have done it in the past, especially with things like WorkCover, we have been there with them, side-by-side, helping them to do that.

But when we get things like this brought to us, we are going to call it out for what it is, we are going to sell it to the South Australian people for exactly what it is, and we are going to oppose stupid legislation every time it is put forward. I look forward to the continuation of this debate. I am sure this bill is going to pass this house, and I look forward to crossbenchers seeing sense on this issue in the other place and our actually getting on with some sensible work to fix the South Australian economy.

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (12:44): I rise to wholeheartedly support the member for Kaurna in introducing this bill and to congratulate him on his focus on this issue and his rightly strong support for our food truck vendors. Food trucks have transformed our city, our dining-out culture and so many of our local community festivals and events. They are present at so many of the events that bring our community together. They provide unique eating options that cater for a range of dietary requirements and allow South Australians young and old and visitors to enjoy the best of food in unique environments. For families, they provide a great fast-food alternative in fun and interesting places. I have even had the pleasure recently of going to a friend's 50th and a friend's 40th and enjoying fare from food trucks at each of those celebrations with, of course, some great South Australian wine.

Our South Australian community has been enriched over many years by our extraordinary food options. As our community has thankfully embraced cultural diversity over numerous decades, we have increasingly also embraced a range of extraordinary food from across the globe. Our state is known and celebrated for our excellent food and, of course, wine, and our food trucks are strengthening our reputation across the globe and providing even more to celebrate, and in doing so creating even more reason to get out with friends and family, to interact and to celebrate family and other occasions.

Food trucks strengthen our community and our cuisine and, importantly, they also provide a unique opportunity for prospective business owners to test their fare on consumers with a relatively low start-up cost. We have an extraordinary entrepreneurial culture growing here in South Australia. With organisations like our New Venture Institute and events like Boss Camp and many others, we are growing a culture where we encourage clever people with a dream to give their dream a go and to bring their dream to reality. This bill is an avenue through which we can help people realise their dreams, and through which we can encourage entrepreneurialism and boost our economy and our reputation as a national and international tourist destination, and a place where the finest and most creative foods are available.

Like many other members in this house, I have received a number of letters from food truck operators who speak of food trucks providing the ability for people to courageously take their first step into business, and each of these vendors, Chimichurri Grill, Delectaballs and others have been highly successful and their letters speak to this success. As well as contributing to our economy as mobile food vendors, many of these entrepreneurs continue on to establish fixed businesses and contribute to the economy in this way.

A couple of years ago, I was absolutely inspired by listening to Dan Mendelson, one of the founders of Burger Theory, at an entrepreneurial youth event. Burger Theory started as a food truck in 2011 and now they have three fixed premises in Adelaide and one in Melbourne, with their truck also still operating. They are now expanding to the Chinese market. Low & Slow American BBQ began as a food truck and in 2016 opened their first fixed business in a Renew Adelaide leased property in Port Adelaide, another great example of a food truck now supporting fixed premises and activation. They have just signed on to a five-year lease. Delectaballs is now branching out to sell packs of their products in local supermarkets in Adelaide, and Jonny's Popcorn, similarly, have expanded their business to supermarket shelves.

Phat Buddha Rolls started as a food truck in 2011 and is now operating as a fixed premises business called Tmor Koul Cambodian Kitchen. Veggie Velo combined with a previous food truck, Smoothie Revolution, to open Juice Lovers Juicery in Regent Arcade. Abbots and Kinney began operating as a cart outside Coffee Branch in Leigh Street and now they have their own store in Pirie Street. Bodri's Hungarian Artisan Bakery began as food truck and is now operating the truck and a cafe in the Adelaide Central Market. Sneaky Pickle began as a food truck in 2011 and now continues to operate the truck as well as establishing a restaurant on Goodwood Road.

Food trucks do not detract from the trade of our bricks and mortar businesses. These mobile food vendors add to it by stimulating extra economic activity which is shown not to impact upon fixed premises businesses. They bring more people to our beautiful South Australian places and spaces and they grow economic and community activity. The Adelaide City Council's own study on the impact of food trucks found that they only take up 0.15 per cent of the Adelaide city market and that there was absolutely no correlation between struggling fixed premises businesses and their proximity to food trucks. Food trucks bring vibrancy and diversity and a welcoming culture to the City of Adelaide and surrounding suburbs, adding a unique element to our community culture.

As was mentioned by the member for Fisher, we have recently seen the phenomenal success of the Fork on the Road food truck events across Adelaide. In the past year, Fork on the Road has also proudly held events at locations including the Wittunga Botanic Garden, Hart's Mill in Port Adelaide, Light Square, Elder Park, Kings Reserve, Park 27B along Park Terrace, Victoria Square and the Morphettville Racecourse. Huge crowds have been attracted to every single event, each showcasing a vast range of food trucks in the one location.

The successes enjoyed by Fork on the Road show that there is a strong demand to see and enjoy food trucks in our state, a demand that absolutely adds to our economy and to our status as a tourist destination. Unfortunately, at present food trucks are hampered in going about their day-to-day business by having to navigate inconsistent and often burdensome rules and requirements across different council areas. Some councils only allow ice-cream vans and others do not allow food trucks at all, and some place caps on the number of food trucks that can trade at a certain time of day.

Councils can tell food trucks when they can and cannot operate their business and they can charge whatever fees they like. This bill rightly, in conjunction with the accompanying regulations, works to create a statewide universal system for food trucks while still recognising the unique role of councils in understanding the best locations where food trucks should operate within a local community. This bill means that councils cannot regulate the type of food sold or be able to prohibit trading at lunchtime. Councils are also subject to a cap in the fees they can charge: an annual fee of $2,000 and a monthly fee of $200.

However, the bill and regulations allow councils to retain the power to set location rules. For instance, councils will be able to determine a minimum distance between mobile food vendors and bricks and mortar businesses where they believe the proximity of food trucks might take away from the trade of a fixed premises business. In drafting these rules we are encouraging councils to look at areas where they want to create economic activity or to direct tourism within their region.

For example, if the City of Onkaparinga wanted to promote food trucks in our southern community, which would be an excellent initiative, they would be able to compete to attract vendors by offering a lower fee than the set maximum of $2,000 a year. They could also encourage vendors, through their location rules, directing vendors to areas that are perhaps away from or unsuitable for a fixed premises business but where food trucks could flourish, adding colour and life to our local community culture.

Perhaps the council might direct vendors to a beach in summer, a stretch of road where fixed food businesses are sparse or to a road near a park that often hosts community events. Certainly, in our southern community the end of Beach Road, near Rotary Park, comes to mind in that regard. This bill allows more consistency and freedom for food trucks to operate their business and contribute to our state's economy and our local communities while still giving councils the power to determine locations. I commend this bill to the house and I again commend the member for Kaurna for bringing it to this place.

Mr DULUK (Davenport) (12:53): I was wondering about the genesis of this proposed legislation. Where did it come from? Then I looked at the member for Kaurna who is sitting in the Premier's seat—and he wants to be the Premier. This is his way to show—

An honourable member: An audition.

Mr DULUK: An audition to show caucus that he has a brilliant idea. The Treasurer has failed in his unemployment-abating measures and the member for Kaurna has gone to the Premier and said, 'If you let me sit in your seat, I'll bring a brilliant bill to parliament and we will have a food truck-led recovery in South Australia.' That is the only reason why I think we have this bit of legislation. Passing this legislation will not produce one extra food truck. It will do none of that. It will not tell an entrepreneur who wants to start a business that it will make it easier for them per se.

If we pass this legislation today, South Australians are not going to wake up tomorrow and say, 'Right, we can now get a single permit and I'm going to get a food truck happening in the City of Prospect,' or Mitcham or Unley, and all of a sudden we are going to have thousands of new jobs. That has been alluded to in the media and the like, that the deregulating of food trucks will see that. In fact, I dare say it might even have unintended consequences.

I do share the member for Kaurna's support of food trucks and acknowledge that they have an important part to play in our economy. Ultimately, a food truck is a great business that sees people experiment and set up a small business as they like. Contrary to the member for Fisher's comment's, we actually are the party of small business, and being lectured by those opposite about the importance of small business and doing it tough is just phenomenal. I look at all the members on the Labor Party side, and hardly any of them have run a small business or been involved in small business. They are just members of unions.

They even have former Liberal members protecting the SDA in speeches to the house, and suddenly this is under the guise of good legislation. As we all know—certainly as we on this side of the house know—excessive red tape and overregulation are significant barriers to business growth for both existing businesses and new entrants, small businesses in particular being most affected. Complying with red tape and bureaucratic requirements is time consuming and costly, eroding business productivity and negatively affecting financial performance.

With record unemployment, underemployment and low levels of economic growth and, of course, with our population growth stagnating, the government comes up with the idea for food trucks. It does not want to talk about South Australian unemployment being 6.8 per cent as of August 2016, about youth unemployment being at almost 15 per cent and a participation rate of about 62 per cent. It does not want to talk about high unemployment in the southern suburbs. It wants to talk about food trucks.

Of course we have to explore options to help business to operate, grow and create jobs, and certainly improving an often inconsistent and burdensome regulatory environment would be a positive step in achieving this end.

Mr Picton interjecting:

Mr DULUK: I agree with the Acting Premier over there. Encouraging opportunities for growth and jobs is also critical; indeed, South Australia has long had an entrepreneurial spirit that must be fostered; as the member for Schubert said, the first food truck was in about 1870. We need to support new markets and new entrants, but we have to strike the right balance, like we have to strike the right balance in all that we do in this place. We must balance the interests of existing businesses and new entrants, and if we swing the pendulum too far in one direction we risk undermining our goal—and that is for economic growth and job creation.

Creating an environment that encourages new entrants may potentially cause the exit of many existing businesses and, as I said, this is the unintended consequence. Mobile food vendors should not be discouraged; in fact, they should be supported, and I am a strong proponent of innovation. I believe food trucks enable entrepreneurs not only to enter the hospitality market but also to make a valuable contribution to it.

Whilst I support food trucks, I do not share the member for Reynell's contribution that food trucks strengthen our community. When I am out there in the community, and we talk about our wonderful volunteers and what they do, people certainly do not say, 'Well, I live in a wonderful community because we have fantastic food trucks.' I think that is gilding the lily a little bit too much.

However, food trucks provide vendors with an affordable and flexible setting to test the water if they want to enter this new market. They can test their product ideas without a commitment to costly and long-term leases, they can learn business skills and explore the right business model for them, and extraordinary growth can ensure this can happen. Of course, this has already happened in the food trucks sector. We have seen food trucks enter the South Australian market relatively unencumbered, and they are growing. There is no evidence that this legislation will increase the number of food trucks.

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