Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will give this to them: the government talk a good game on red tape. Unfortunately, we need more than talk—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 16:59 to 17:14

As I was saying, this government talks a good game on red tape, but it takes more than talk to have an impact on regulatory growth in this country. As someone who worked in the ICT sector before entering this space, I have firsthand knowledge of the experience of sifting through page after page of regulation implemented by parliaments and regulators across this country. So it is presumably people like my former self that the member for Kooyong was trying to impress when he set up his website cuttingredtape.gov.au, now being lovingly maintained by the member for Pearce. The 'Track our Progress' section on this website purports to be a running measure of red tape reduction under this government and claims that the Abbott government has saved business $2.45 billion in deregulatory savings since they took office. Unfortunately these savings have been more stunt than substance—changing the word 'facsimile' to 'fax' and removing the hyphen from the word 'e-mail' in all government legislation. It truly puts the micro into microeconomic reform.

The website cuttingredtape.gov.au elevates spin over substance, and it seems that people are seeing through it, too. The Sydney Morning Herald revealed on Sunday that 99 per cent of the comments left on the website in its first 3½ months in operation were left by spammers and that nearly 50 per cent of all the traffic on the page had come from public servants in Canberra. It is also interesting to note that the government's deregulation PR campaign only seems to move the metre one way, in that the extra regulation the government has implemented during its term is conspicuously absent from its press releases. The truth is that, just like the Howard government before it, this government is addicted to regulation.

The motion before us claims that the previous, Labor, government introduced more than 21,000 additional regulations in 5½ years, but it fails to mention that the Howard government introduced more than 40,000 pages of regulation between the years 2000 and 2006. And I will do the maths for you: that is an average of 6,000 pages of new regulation a year through the term of the Howard government. This government, like the Howard government before it, has a 'regulate first, think later' attitude. Many of the government's policies introduced just this year impose extra burdens on business. In the field of policy where I spent the majority of my career before entering this place, the ICT sector, we have seen a suite of new regulatory burdens on business. The metadata legislation we have been debating this year put a greater burden on telcos by demanding that they retain certain types of their customers' data for two years. The Children's e-Safety Commissioner creates regulatory obligations with respect to bullying on the internet and the response of social media companies to these claims. The online copyright enforcement code of practice and an upcoming website-blocking regime to be debated by this parliament in coming sitting weeks will create similar burdens. These are clear examples of regulatory growth—not that you would see them on www.cuttingredtape.gov.au.

We should not move away from the brunt of this motion, however. It is true to say that there were around 22,000 new regulations implemented under the Labor government from 2007 to 2013. A total of 3,400 of these were airworthiness directives—measures that were put in place to make and keep air travel safer. After the tragedies that have occurred in the last year, I doubt that anyone in this chamber would get up in this place and criticise measures of this kind. There are multiple other examples of necessary regulation that the previous Labor government implemented. However, it should be noted that under Labor from 2007 to 2013 a total of 16,694 acts and legislative instruments were repealed—without a flash website, without fanfare and a self-promoting assistant minister—just as a matter of course for a responsible government.

Labor introduced the standard business reporting to streamline business-to-government reporting. Labor also introduced the national business names registration service, which removes the requirement for business to register in each state and territory jurisdiction, significantly lowering costs and time for businesses. Schemes like the Superannuation Clearing House enable businesses with fewer than 20 employees to pay all of their staff super contributions into a single transaction rather than multiple super funds. These are tangible ways in which the previous, Labor, government relieved regulatory burdens on business—substantive ways, interventions of substance rather than spin, and without a flash website.

It is time to have a grown-up discussion about the rising levels of regulation in Australia. I do believe this. But I do hope that the government can leave its PR-driven, hype-filled, hyphen-busting approach behind and join Labor in a conversation about the substantive ways of reducing regulatory growth in this country.

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