Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to get rid of them. In fact, we support getting rid of them—some of them. We did it in government when we removed thousands and thousands and thousands. We did not just have a national day off for the whole of Australia on bonfire red-tape day! When people add up the individual savings, it amounts to a big, fat zero. Some of the efficiency red-tap reduction went so far as getting rid of a comma on a page. They forgot to tell you how much it cost to get a bureaucrat, or somebody in the department, to find where that comma was—'Find me a lot of commas and get rid of those!' This is the sort of rubbish—a waste of time and taxpayers money. If it is going to get rid of anything, this government ought to get rid of itself. That would make smaller government. It would make it really efficient too. Get rid of yourselves. No, hang on—you are working on it. Sorry, I just missed the last couple of weeks. You are working on it. You are getting rid of yourselves. Well done. It would make a lot more sense than having this bill here, which actually gets rid of some really good people and a really good organisation.

Perhaps, because CAMAC is so independent and made up of expert members who use proper research and verify what they do when providing those quality reports, there is a pattern building here that this government does not want independent advice. It does not want frank and fearless advice. It wants something else. It wants a whole group of people that just say, 'Yes. Yes. Yes. Anything you want. Whatever you say.' The world does not work that way. People will stand up and speak out, and there will be a price to be paid for getting rid of CAMAC.

Not many people listening to this will have ever heard of CAMAC; I do not expect them to have. I do not expect people up in the galleries to know what CAMAC is, the work that it has done, or how important it is. It is one of those quiet, expert, independent bodies that costs taxpayers a trifling, tiny, little bit of money from the government but provides so much value and so much expertise. So much, that if you add it up—the value and the savings to the taxpayer, or the efficiency measures to our markets, or the reason why we are held in such regard around the world for some of the thing that we have reformed in this country—then you would appreciate the real value of this body.

Obviously, this is a government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. They have no idea what value is compared to price. Anyone can work out $3.1 million over the forward estimates. They will roll that off as if it means something. But, what of the value here? The value that we have lost is enormous. Next time the government might need some advice, do you know where it will turn to? It will pay more than $3.1 million for a report from a friendly consultancy firm who will be told, 'This is the results page with the results we want. Write 500 pages that backup our view.' They will charge that to the taxpayer and it will cost the taxpayer several million dollars.

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