Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to join the member for Longman and others to speak on the Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2015) Bill 2015. On this side of politics, we are all about small government. It is the DNA of the Country Liberal Party, which is the party I belong to that is in coalition with the government. The DNA of my colleagues throughout the coalition is all about small government. There is a place for regulation, legislation and government oversight, but where does it exist? It needs to be part of a deliberate, careful, considered mechanism to improve the business environment and the quality of life for individuals.

We often look at this the wrong way. We should not have a system where businesses and individuals strive to satisfy the needs of the bureaucracy. The system should be designed so that the bureaucracy and the legislation satisfy the needs of all Australians. That is what we on this side of the House are endeavouring to do. Every line on our law books should serve as a policy outcome. Every line, every paragraph and every subclause should be weighed up against one simple question. That question is: is this the most efficient way to achieve what we are trying to achieve? If anyone can identify a regulation, a part of a regulation or a system where the answer to that question is no, someone—either someone in this place, through a legislative mechanism, or someone in the bureaucracy—needs to go back to the drawing board and start with the end in mind. What is the outcome we are looking for here? What is the best way to achieve that outcome with the smallest burden of compliance?

The hundreds of thousands of pages of legislation we currently have on the books have not been shaped through this framework. Since the parliament first convened some 114 years ago, governments of all flavours have passed tens of thousands of bills. On top of that, their state and territory counterparts have been going through the same process. At the same time, local governments have also been going through these processes in their areas of responsibility. Each of those tens of thousands of pages of legislation, regulatory processes and protocols adds to the burden that individuals and businesses have to bear—not to mention being a burden for government to bear, since all these acts and laws need oversight and administration. Until this government was elected, no-one had ever gone through this tangle of red tape, these tens of thousands of pages, and weighed costs against benefits. No-one had done it.

I am happy to stand here as a member of the coalition government—the first government in Australia's history to do exactly that. When we were elected in 2013, we received a clear mandate from the Australian people and from the Australian business community to reduce the burden of excess regulation. I use the word 'excess' very deliberately. There is a role for regulation. Some laws protect us from crime, some laws protect the environment from pollution, we have regulations to make sure taxes are collected, and we have bureaucracies to ensure that people who are in need get assistance—the people who use Centrelink, for example. But, if a law is redundant, if a law is inefficient or if there is a better way for the intended outcome to be achieved, then the regulation needs to go.

Looking over the explanatory memorandum for the legislation we are considering here today, it is not hard to find fantastic examples of redundancy. You do not have to go far to find superseded legislation, cumbersome legislation, legislation which doubles up and legislation which is inefficient. A quick glance at the full page of abbreviations one needs to know in order to understand the legislation gives a pretty strong indication that something has gone wrong along the way.

Consider, if you will, the industry of beef production. In the Northern Territory, cattle production is the cornerstone of our economy—a cornerstone, I point out, that was without warning cast aside by the Labor government in 2011, but that is a story for another time. Modern farmers are professionals. They need to understand meteorology, chemistry, geography and animal husbandry. They are scientists striving to get the highest quality product possible from the resources they have available. They should not need to be lawyers as well. Yet there are six pieces of legislation on this list alone which deal directly with beef production: the Domestic Meat Premises Charge Act, the Export Inspection and Meat Charges Collection Act, the Meat Export Charge Act, the Meat Export Charge Collection Act, the Meat Inspection Act and the Meat Inspection Arrangements Act—and remember that these are just the federal regulations! The situation is especially absurd when you realise that large sections of the acts I just listed have been redundant since 2011—yet they still remain on our books.

Every unnecessary piece of legislation, every inefficient piece of legislation, is a compliance burden on all Australians. Every form a businessman or a businesswoman fills out in order to satisfy a bureaucracy represents time he or she is not spending developing their business. Can you imagine how many forms and how many layers of bureaucracy someone involved in beef production must come up against? Apart from those six acts, there was subsequent legislation—which left two layers of federal regulation in effect—in addition to all the state, territory and local government regulations.

I am immensely proud that legislation repealed by this coalition government is already saving $2.45 billion annually. Just in case you did not hear me correctly, I will repeat that: it is saving $2.45 billion. That is a lot of money. If this bill receives assent, a further 890 redundant or inefficient Commonwealth acts will be struck from the statute books. Health, agriculture, telecommunications, human services, transport—all of these industries will see compliance costs reduced. How many hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars has the beef industry spent navigating that maze of red tape I discussed a moment ago?

I am excited about this legislation, because it will free business up to do what it does best: employing people and generating wealth and jobs. Every single dollar that businesses do not spend on navigating bureaucracies and cross-checking redundant legislation is a dollar they will invest in their business—money they can use to buy new equipment or employ new staff.

Every hour a business operator does not have to spend deciphering lists of legislative acronyms or filling in the forms needed to satisfy the bureaucracies, which have been set up to oversee these laws, is an hour saved. It is an hour they will spend with their clients or staff developing their business and increasing productivity.

A good government appears when it is needed, does what needs to be done, and then gets out of the way and lets people get on with their business. That is what this government is all about.

We heard the member for Longman talking about one of the examples in this package of bills is simplifying the process for buying a mobile phone—identification for prepaid mobile phones. That is also helping our young people, because they are very big users of prepaid mobile phones.

I wish to reiterate that removing redundant legislation is an example of how we, as a good coalition government, are getting out of the way of business and letting people do what they need to do—that is, running their businesses, generating wealth and creating jobs. I commend the bills to the House.

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