Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

It did finish well. I can tell you a Wacker Packer is not a motor vehicle. It is very good at packing down road base and crushed granite—excellent—but it is not a motor vehicle. It is not a car. You cannot actually go far on it. It is covered by the 2009 act in the way that it is because of one word. We are actually here changing one word. A lot of the red tape reduction that we have seen over the last year by the government was changing one word—it was changing e-mail into email, or a few things like that, many thousands of times. This is a change which does make a red tape reduction.

The current definition of a motor vehicle includes an item capable of travelling at speeds of at least 10 kilometres an hour, or which has one or more motors with a total power greater than 200 watts. A Wacker Packer does not go 10 kilometres an hour—I can tell you that as well—at least not in a horizontal direction, but up and down it certainly does. It has a motor and it has power greatly exceeding 200 watts, so it gets caught in that definition. The new definition changes one word—it changes 'or' to 'and'—so that a motor vehicle will be something capable of travelling at speeds of at least 10 kilometres per hour 'and' which has one or more motors with a total power greater than 200 watts. It is a very simple amendment which takes out something which was clearly an accidental outcome of the original bill.

Again, it could have been done unbelievably quickly with phone call and a quick amendment. That is the work of government. The fact that this government in many ways is holding its work for so long before it brings it to the parliament, even when there is general consensus, is perhaps one of the reasons we do not have much legislation in this House. I am quite astonished when I go to caucus meetings every Tuesday and look at the list of legislation. I look for the legislation that actually matches the rhetoric. I look for legislation that is about growth, opportunity and removing barriers. Here is an actual example of it and it has been sitting in the back cupboard for a year. It is very difficult to explain why that would be the case.

That is really all I have to say on this bill. They are important amendments to the act. They will impact on a number of businesses, particularly in the car hire area and a few other areas as well. It will reduce their paperwork. These are actually good amendments. They are the kinds of amendments that governments from both sides of this House make. They are important. They should be mechanical amendments and handled quickly. They are traditionally handled in the other house because we usually debate controversial bills in this House. There usually are some, but there are not any at the moment. There is very little legislation coming before this House. It is good to see it finally here. I hope it goes through speedily. I hope it is also scheduled in the Senate very quickly so it does not have to wait a year to get in there as well because in that case it would be another year for something we all agree on. I repeat what the member for Deakin, who interjected earlier, said: get on with it.

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