Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this bill, the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Repeal Day) Bill 2014, that directly delivers on the coalition government's promise to cut red tape. Today we are doing what we said we would do: cut red and green tape for the good of the nation.

Prior to last year's election, this government committed to cut $1 billion worth of red and green tape per year. I am proud to be standing here today not only delivering on this election commitment but acknowledging that this government has more than doubled its pre-election target.

More than 400 measures have resulted in over $2.1 billion in compliance costs. I will say it again: $2.1 billion of reduced costs to business and not-for-profit groups, which filter down to Australian families.

Last month, we had the 2014 Spring Repeal Day, where we were continuing the work of the government's first repeal day in March this year. Last month's repeal day introduced legislation into the House to remove almost 1,000 pieces and over 7,200 pages of regulation.

In March, the coalition government removed over 10,000 pieces and 50,000 pages of regulation, resulting in over $700 million of compliance costs. This is just the beginning. This government will continue to repeal unnecessary and counterproductive regulation every year, with two designated repeal days per year.

The Treasury Legislation Amendment (Repeal Day) Bill 2014 is just one part of the government's Spring Repeal Day agenda. The measure contained in this bill improves and simplifies the operation of laws relating to taxation, to superannuation and to shareholdings in certain financial sector companies. This bill will implement a number of refinements to simplify the approval requirements when seeking the Treasurer's approval of a change in ownership of a financial sector company while also clarifying employer payslip requirements. This bill will repeal the payslip reporting provisions in the superannuation law that would have increased the regulatory burden on employers beyond that currently imposed under the Fair Work legislation.

The current regulations are in danger of imposing an extremely costly burden on business that was never intended. By repealing this regulation, this government is providing certainty for employers that they do not need to be preparing for significant changes to their payslip software when it comes to superannuation reporting. This bill will repeal duplicative provisions from the superannuation legislation that allows for regulations to be created prescribing additional information to be included on employee payslips on superannuation contributions. The repeal of this regulation will not affect the information employees currently receive on superannuation contributions on their payslip. There is already legislation requiring employers to at least report details of employee superannuation entitlements that accrued during the pay period on an employee's payslip. For employees to report actual contributions and payment dates they would need to invest in major upgrades in their software. We want to avoid that major expense for employers, especially when the benefit for employees would be so marginal.

There are so many provisions in place to recover unpaid super should an employer be doing the wrong thing, and employees can now also typically check online via their superannuation fund whether their employer is making regular superannuation contributions whenever the employee wants to check.

Mr Brough interjecting—

Someone was being unparliamentary!

Mr Brough interjecting—

It also simplifies taxation laws by removing inoperative provisions, consolidating duplicated provisions and moving longstanding regulations into the primary law. I think most Australians would agree that tax laws can be complex and difficult to understand and are frequently costly to comply with. For example, the current provisions dealing with a tax file number and investment income reports provided by investment bodies to the Commissioner of Taxation are overly prescriptive and difficult to comply with. They are not sufficiently flexible to allow the commissioner to continue to pursue further ways of reducing compliance costs. We want to increase that flexibility for the Commissioner of Taxation to facilitate modern reporting methods, which should reduce compliance costs for investment bodies.

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