Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Personal Property Securities Amendment (Deregulatory Measures) Bill 2014. This bill makes a small amendment to the Personal Property Securities Act, passed by the Labor government in 2009. As the explanatory memorandum to this bill notes, the PPSA was an important and long-awaited microeconomic reform. The Labor government established a single national system for the creation, registration and enforcement of security interests in personal property. Before the enactment of the PPSA, personal property securities in Australia were governed by a complex mess of common-law principles and legislation, including more than 70 different statutes. This was obviously an unacceptable state of affairs.

Personal property securities play an important role in the Australian economy. Secured credit is a significant part of the Australian credit market, and it is vital in a range of business applications. The cost, confusion and uncertainty around security interests in personal property before Labor's reforms were a real burden on business—and particularly small and medium enterprises. In government, Labor worked hard to alleviate that burden. The Productivity Commission estimated that our reforms saved some $70 million a year in compliance costs.

This bill is a modest addition to that work. It clarifies and simplifies the operation of the PPSA scheme with respect to some types of short-term leases. Labor is happy to support it. A large reform such as the PPSA will always require this sort of finetuning.

The PPSA provides for the circumstances in which the lease of goods will constitute a security interest for the purposes of the act. This includes leases for a term of more than 12 months, or indefinite leases. However, the act also presently applies to leases for 90 days or more of 'serial numbered goods', a category which includes motor vehicles. The bill will abolish this stipulation.

The hire industry has expressed its concern about the 90-day rule. As the explanatory memorandum notes, the complexity of having two rules covering different goods and different lease terms has proven confusing and costly to deal with. Accordingly, Labor is happy to support this minor but evidently worthy tweak to the PPSA scheme. In fact, we wish there was more of this sort of activity from the government.

This bill was introduced on the first of the government's so-called 'repeal days' on 19 March 2014. Amid much fanfare, the government committed itself to an ambitious deregulatory agenda. Announcing the introduction of this and a handful of other bills, the Prime Minister said in the House that his government would be holding 'the biggest bonfire of regulations in our country's history.' As has so often been the case with this government, however, its action has not lived up to its rhetoric. Had they had some policy ambition, had they done the work, had they properly consulted with industry, the government could have brought in any number of bills like this one. They could have brought any number of careful, sensible deregulatory reforms into the parliament. But this is a lazy government. This is an erratic government. This is not the 'careful', 'methodical' and 'grown-up' government we were promised.

When they do cut, they cut recklessly. They cut without consulting, indeed apparently even without thinking. This is a government which sought to abolish Australia's national security legislation watchdog at the same time as pressing ahead with successive waves of new national security laws. This is a government committed to repealing the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission even over the objections of those organisations it regulates! This is the government which hopelessly bungled its attempt to repeal Labor's Future of Financial Advice laws.

But for the most part, the government is content with mere showmanship. They brag about repealing spent, inoperative regulations. They boast about correcting typos and drafting errors on the statute book, claiming it as a bold deregulatory reform. This is routine work. It is house-keeping—the sort of activity all governments undertake as a matter of course, and certainly not a reform of any kind.

Given this sorry performance, it is no surprise that the business community—supposedly the beneficiaries of the government's deregulation agenda—are sorely disappointed. After just the first repeal day, the Business Spectator wrote that the Abbott government's 'bonfire of red tape had fizzled'.

Amidst all of the recklessness and sheer nonsense from the government, this lonely bill contains a small, sensible reform of a business regulation. Undoubtedly there are many other opportunities in our regulatory framework for such reforms, if only the government would do the work to identify them, to consult with those affected and to think carefully about the consequences of changes to the law.

I commend the bill to the House.

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