Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2015) Bill 2015, which, while it does not have a very exciting name, does so many positive things for many businesses and individuals in this country by improving the efficiency of government and cutting unnecessary red tape and costs to the Australian taxpayer. The bill is a whole-of-government initiative to amend or repeal legislation across seven portfolios. The bill brings forward measures to reduce the regulatory burden for businesses, individuals and the community sector that are the subject of an individual, stand-alone bill. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr Porter, said in his second reading speech, this bill:

… will amend or repeal 14 acts across portfolios, some of which are spent and redundant or have remained on the Commonwealth statute books long beyond the date of fulfilling their purpose. Other acts being amended or repealed have provisions that have been superseded by other legislation years ago.

The bill also makes a number of amendments to legislation to reduce complexity and compliance costs.

It is often all too legitimate criticism that governments are too bureaucratic and inefficient. As to what it means for the business community, I hear much comment from the 30,000 businesses that I represent. Coming from a small-business background myself, I hear their lament. Often they say to me, 'If only government could operate more like business,' or make the more pointed criticism, 'If we ran our business the way government operates, we wouldn't have a business; we'd all go broke.' Regrettably, often what happens is that, when those opposite get into government, they do send the country broke, and it is up to us to clean up their mess. That is exactly what this bill is all about. It is about cleaning up the mess.

The coalition's goal is to make life easier for Australians and to make it easier for businesses to invest, to create jobs, to employ people and to grow the economy. Cutting red tape is about Australians spending less time in queues, less time filling out forms, less time searching for information and less time dealing with the duplication and the myriad of forms across different departments. Many businesses continually tell me that they are filling out the same information in a different format when they are asked for it by different government departments. Under the former Labor government, Commonwealth regulation was costing Australians approximately $65 billion. That is a staggering amount of money—4.2 per cent of GDP. The coalition set itself a target to reduce the regulatory burden by $1 billion a year. Not only did we do that; we doubled that target in our first year, and we are now on our way to meeting a fresh $1 billion target for 2015. On the government's third repeal day, which was on 18 March this year, we made a decision to decrease the $65 billion regulatory burden by $2.45 billion. To date, we have implemented $1.57 billion of that $2.45 billion, with $880 million to be implemented. I thank the Assistant Treasurer, the member for Kooyong, for all of the fantastic work that he did in that process. That is $2.45 billion in savings from cutting red tape, which is equal to every man, woman and child in this country putting $100 back into the national piggy bank.

What is concerning is that this whole process is the first time in Australian history that a Commonwealth government has undertaken a thorough and accurate stocktake of all of those federal regulatory costs and consistently measured and reduced the cost of Commonwealth government red tape on Australian businesses, organisations, families and individuals. As a result, Australia now has its most precise, comprehensive and transparent program to reverse the growing costs of red tape on the Australian economy. It is now more than a year since we started this concerted plan to reduce the regulatory burden on our society, because we recognise that, for far too long, Australians have suffered from poorly designed and excessive regulation.

There are six areas that we are streamlining and cutting red tape in that I want to focus on today: business, education, health, building and construction, individuals, and students. In the business sector, one of the key measures was implementing a much easier monthly pay-as-you-go system for certain businesses. Businesses choosing to use this method will now only need to calculate their actual instalment income on a quarterly basis. There are annual compliance savings there of $2.7 million. We have also improved the Australian Taxation Office website so that six million Australians can find relevant information more quickly. That has resulted in an annual compliance saving of $48.5 million. Other measures announced in the first year of cutting red tape included repealing the carbon and mining taxes, making other changes to the entry thresholds for pay-as-you-go instalments and expanding private sector access to the government's Document Verification Service. That resulted in a combined net red tape saving of $194.4 million. We also introduced a one-stop shop for environmental approvals, resulting in a net red tape saving of a staggering $426.3 million.

In the educational sector, we have developed an online national assessment platform which will deliver the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy, NAPLAN, online. That is scheduled to be available from 2017 and will deliver an annual compliance saving of $9.7 million.

There are so many other good stories happening, particularly in the health area. A streamlined grant administration processes for the National Health and Medical Research Council and a range of other changes will result in a net red tape saving of more than $150 million. This will be very welcome news to the many medical research institutes that are based in my electorate and those particularly in Brisbane: QUT, the University of Queensland, the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and many, many other research bodies.

In the building and construction area, we have removed the costly and time consuming requirement for builders to be certified to Australian standard AS4801 or equivalent prior to applying for scheme accreditation. Unaccredited builders will now have the opportunity to undertake government funded building work where they are in a joint venture with an accredited company. They can operate under the partner's scheme accredited systems. That well be a very welcome relief to many in the construction industry.

For individuals, we have implemented additional functionality for myGov users to allow customers to update their details in one place using the myGov tell us once service to obtain secure and convenient access to online services with a single account and one set of credentials. Again, that has saved an enormous amount of money: $5.4 million. We have made identity checks easier for those many hundreds of thousands of people who are working in the retail sectors and for consumers when they purchase a new prepaid mobile phone. That has delivered annual compliance savings of $6.2 million. The myTax initiative reduces the amount of information 1.4 million users need to supply to the Australian Taxation Office when filing their e-tax forms each year. That has resulted in red tape savings of $156 million.

The government is making it easier for Australians to access government services. The changes will see Centrelink claimants able to check the status of their claims online. That will reduced the need to waste many minutes in direct follow-up interventions by phone or having to go in in person at a Centrelink service centre. Students will also be able to upload their course selections. Again, they can make some very flexible changes. They can do that in their own time and at whatever time they want to do that. Students who receive government payments are now able to change those details online. It will be very, very useful for those who are studying and receiving things like youth allowance. They will no longer be required to contact a call centre or attend a service centre. They can just go online. This will result in annual compliance savings of $2.7 million.

In undertaking this thorough and consistent stock take of all Commonwealth regulatory costs, the government has developed a map of the Commonwealth regulatory environment. What is surprising is that this is the first time in Australian history that a Commonwealth government has undertaken a thorough and accurate stock take—and it is a stock take—of all federal regulatory costs. It is consistently measuring and reducing the cost of Commonwealth red tape on Australian businesses, organisations, families and individuals.

What is equally surprising is that this is one of the few times that any country in the world has engaged in a rigorous and consistent process that allows for an absolutely accurate assessment of the total cost a national government imposes on the economy. The benefits of having an accurate measure of Commonwealth regulations is obvious in the now and, as I say, very important for ministers, departments, secretaries, regulators and policy officers. They will be able to get a detailed picture of what regulations the Commonwealth government has instituted through primary legislation, subordinate instruments and quasi-regulations.

Thanks to this process being undertaken by the coalition, Australia now has its most precise, comprehensive and transparent program to reverse the growing cost of red tape on the economy. It also provides an opportunity for the government to learn how to work more positively with business, community organisations and many other individuals. This has been very important and highly beneficial. Reducing red tape is not just about what we do within our own borders; it is also about other countries, it is about potential investors and it is also about importers and also about how we are perceived in terms of the ease of doing business in this country and how easy it is for overseas investors.

An unacceptable fact is that, according to the World Economic Forum's global competiveness index, Australia's competitiveness has declined during the course of the last decade. In 2013-14, the Australian economy was ranked 21st out of 148 economies, with the perception of those surveyed being that Australia was well behind in terms of global best practice when it came to the burden of government regulation. This is not a dynamic that this country can afford to have continue. This is exactly what Prime Minister Turnbull was talking about when he said:

The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative.

We cannot achieve that outcome if our spirit of innovation is strangled by red tape.

This will be on ongoing process that the Turnbull government is committed to: reducing the regulatory burden for all Australians. We understand that in order to build a prosperous economy we must relieve the burden of red tape on businesses, community organisations, families and individuals. We must allow people and businesses to do what they do best without spending endless hours dealing with paperwork, waiting in queues or searching for information. They should be concentrating on market development, product development and staff development.

It is important that businesses, community organisations and others in my electorate of Brisbane contact me to see how reduce red tape so that we can continue to build a productive and prosperous economy for the benefit of all Australians. As to this, I want to highlight the fact that the Australian government annual deregulation report 2014 and the Australian government's Autumn repeal day 2015 overview can be downloaded at cuttingredtape.gov.au.

This is a much welcomed bill. It will make a huge difference to the many thousands of businesses, families and individuals in the electorate of Brisbane. I welcome this bill.

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