Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I might get an extension of time; I'm certainly hoping for that!

And I know the work you have done in conjunction with Professor Frank Zumbo to look at regulation, to see how we can reduce it, to see what we can do with such things as the Competition and Consumer Act. I know that is digressing a little bit from the legislation before us, but they are all the sorts of things that are going to help business get ticking along. They are all the sorts of things that are going to help us as a coalition government, as a parliament, as a nation to pay back the debt and deficit that we have been struck with.

There is a risk that this bill will not be considered ambitious enough. We have heard that from Labor members. But it is ambitious. It follows on from the successful repeal days put forward by the member for Kooyong. As we move along as a government, hopefully, these omnibus repeal days will not be ambitious as the previous one, because the art of good government is to get the regulations such that they streamline efficiency, to get the regulations such that business knows that it can perform the job it does on behalf of the nation and the taxpayers to ensure that things are going well. The economic parameters, policies and growth that we are attempting to put into place with every piece of legislation that we bring into this place and that we attempt to get through in the Senate goes to the very heart of that, goes to the very core of having good government and good business conditions.

We have been helped in part by good weather in regional areas. I know my electorate is at the moment looking better than it has looked for a long time. Hopefully, we will have a very good harvest. I know that my predecessor, Kay Hull, suffered a long drought—the Millennium Drought—which caused poor conditions even though we had the Howard government in place producing good economic reform and a regulation regime that was good for business. The weather was not kind. But now we have a perfect storm of opportunity energising enterprise, as the Minister for Small Business would say. We have reasonable weather conditions in our food bowls save, I have to say, the electorates of the member for Parkes, the member for Maranoa and a few others where it is a bit dry and they need a bit of rain. But overall, in the Riverina, the Mallee, the seat of the member for Murray and other areas where there is a great food bowl, we have conditions that, hopefully, with no more frosts and a bit more rain in late September and early October, will have a bumper harvest. That, coupled with the omnibus repeal day measures we are bringing in and, hopefully, passing through the lower house this week, will see regional Australia thriving and Australia prospering as well.

The member for Rankin understands that, when regional Australia is strong, so too is Australia.

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

He is nodding; of course he knows that. I know that he listens very carefully when regional members of parliament stand up and speak. I know that he would be pleased that, when we did have a leadership change this week, the new coalition agreement struck is going to benefit regional Australia. I know the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, understood regional Australia and worked very well with the member for Wide Bay, the Leader of the Nationals, but I am sure that the member for Wentworth will do the same. I am sure that he will respect the role that the National Party has always played, plays now and will continue to play in this parliament and in this nation to ensure that repeal days are successful, that policy is good for regional Australia and that we get on with the job of doing what is best as far as regulatory and economic reform are concerned.

The three bills are separate whole-of-government initiatives which deliver different outcomes. The Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2015) Bill 2015 will bring forward deregulation initiatives which reduce regulatory burden and repeal acts and provisions in acts which are no longer required. Sure, that does involve some grammatical fix-ups in the many statutes, legislation and bills on the books, but we need to get rid of some of those archaic, decades-old pieces of legislation and wordings that are no longer relevant.

The Amending Acts 1980 to 1989 Repeal Bill 2015 will repeal spent and redundant amending and repeal acts which were made in the decade of the 1980s. The measures within these acts have taken effect and do not contain any other substantive provisions, and that is fair enough.

The Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2015 will repair minor errors and oversights in Commonwealth consolidated acts and repeal spent or redundant provisions of acts. When I say 'minor errors' I mean that sometimes, when Labor was in power in the six sorry years that we had Kevin Rudd, then Julia Gillard, then Kevin Rudd administrations, we did see policy being introduced into this place in great haste, with little thought and with no consultation. Because the Labor government had been able to strike a deal with the member for Lyne and the member for New England at the time—the Independents—and the Green, they were able to ramrod legislation in this place, which caused a lot of consternation, particularly in regional Australia, about the haste and the waste. Australia was poorer as a result.

The three bills assist to deliver the coalition government's commitment to reducing red tape. I am joined here by the parliamentary secretary, the member for McPherson. She understands the need to reduce red tape. She understands just how important it is for government to get out of the way of business, to make sure that everything business does works to the benefit of the nation. We are cleaning the statute book and ensuring that outdated, redundant and duplicative regulation is repealed. That is what this is all about.

The government announced that the total deregulatory saving since September 2013—and the member for Rankin is going to be interested in this figure—is $2.45 billion. That is going to be a saving against that total bill that, had it been left unchecked, was going to reach $667 billion. Thankfully, we are doing something about that. Thankfully, we are striding towards a credible surplus in the future. Labor have not produced a surplus since 1989. At the time the member for Rankin was no doubt at school, or perhaps he was not even born. I am not quite sure. When were you born?

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