Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The House is actually debating the Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) 2011, but superannuation and statute and stocktake all start with the same letter so I suppose that is the link. I thank the member for Greenway for her spirited contribution about deregulation and about how red tape will be made so much easier in the telco sector by a government that has used taxpayers' money to wipe out the competitors. And Labor has the hide to say it is interested in markets—have you ever heard such utter nonsense in all of your life? They are so committed to telecommunications, they are going to wipe out all of the competition. That will reduce red tape! No-one will have to worry about considering options or about consumer outcomes—the government will just use taxpayers' money to take out the competitors. That is a very interesting approach to markets, and that perhaps identifies why a cost-benefit analysis on the NBN project has not been done. It would have highlighted that there were so many better ways of going about this project. Like everything else that seems to happen in this place, it is all about Labor playing the political game and putting good public policy way, way, way down the priority list.

The Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) affects 36 acts—it amends 11 acts and repeals 25 others. It repeals 39 redundant special appropriations relating to the Commonwealth's financial framework, including one statutory special account, and 25 redundant acts in their entirety. The bill has no potential impact that we can observe, and certainly the coalition will not oppose it. What we wish, though, is that this housecleaning of statutes actually transforms into a genuine deregulation agenda. It seems there is no problem that this Rudd-Gillard government or Gillard-Rudd government—we will see, in time—thinks cannot be fixed with more regulation. They used to think there was no problem that could not be solved by spending billions of taxpayers' dollars, but those days are gone. We are borrowing $135 million a day to keep the place ticking over, and that throw-money-at-it strategy is certainly putting strains on the fiscal circumstances of the Commonwealth and putting upward pressure on interest rates, making it hard for small businesses to access funds. They cannot spend money like that now, so the option is to regulate the wazoo out of it and that will somehow solve the problem.

Whilst this Statute Stocktake Bill does some housecleaning and removes some legislation that no longer serves any useful purpose, it does not go to what is really required and what I hope the parliament will increasingly turn its focus to, and that is a genuine effort to lift the regulatory burden and make sure we remove pointless and needless and overly prescriptive regulation that serves no positive outcome for the nation and its citizens. It is an enormous drain on the economy. It displaces resources. It has been estimated that each year compliance with regulation costs around $80 billion, so it is not surprising that the broader community, particularly the small business community, is completely disbelieving of Labor claims that they will do something about deregulation.

We have heard that deregulation in telecommunications means using taxpayers' money to wipe out the competitors and to buy out their assets and their customers and then make sure you shut down the hybrid fibre coax network that is already placed to deliver about 100 megahertz to 3,000,000 households. You just buy that out so there is no competition. That is a very interesting form of deregulation.

The objective of this Statute Stocktake Bill is to do some housework. We saw some housework when the Labor government committed to implement BAS Easy to ease the GST compliance burden—a way of completing quarterly BASs in minutes was the claim. Dr Emerson made that claim, amongst many. Labor estimated that its GST plan would apply to about 1.4 million small businesses, with turnover from $50,000 down to around $2 million. However, the housecleaning that was involved with that particular measure was simply to sweep it under the carpet. The government quietly revoked its promise to implement BAS Easy and reneged on its promise to simplify goods and services tax paperwork for small business. It is a pity that initiative was not captured and in the spirit of the bill before the chamber.

There was another commitment made, one which is also not captured in any statutory sense, certainly not in the Statute Stocktake (No. 1) Bill, and that was the promise of one in, one out. Remember that promise? What a great idea that was. I know the Labor Party was quite pleased when it made the promise before the 2007 election that that would be its approach to regulation—one in, one out. Yet the statistics tell a different story. The actual outcomes, the stats provided by the Commonwealth's own ComLaw register, are quite damning and reveal an abysmal performance by the Labor government against its own one in, one out commitment. Between 2008 and 2010, the Common­wealth's own ComLaw register revealed that federal Labor introduced 12,835 new regulations. On the one in, one out basis—and I am prepared to cut the government a bit of slack—even 10,000, 11,000 or 12,000 would have been close to that but, no, there have been 12,835 new regulations and only 58 repealed. To quote Maxwell Smart in Get Smart, 'missed by that much'. What an abysmal performance: 12,835 new regulations in, 58 only repealed. So much for the one in, one out commitment. That rounds out to about 220 new regulations for each one they have removed, way off anything that would be a respectable performance.

Who can forget the Gillard government's desire—in fact, they spruiked about it today—as of 1 July to make small businesses the 'pay clerk' for the Gillard government's paid parental leave scheme? I am all for parents getting paid parental leave. In fact the coalition's policy is very much superior in that regard. What I am not for is the government coming in with its deficient scheme and imposing on small employers the red tape and cost burden of being the pay clerk for the government's own deficient scheme. That is not helping. That is not a cleaning out of excessive red tape. That is adding more burden. That is the kind of measure I would have liked to have seen in this bill. In fact it did not even need to be in this bill—the private member's bill I introduced to achieve that objective was defeated in this chamber by the government and the Independents, and they stand condemned for that insensitivity to the regulatory burden on time- and cash-scarce small businesses.

It goes further. Look at the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten. He is very keen and probably wondering, a year out since the last change of leader, whether maybe he is due. That may be what he is thinking. It is hard to know. When we highlighted the government's plan inspired by secret union meetings to undertake a coordinated attack on independent contractors and self-employed people he said, 'No, I won't do anything; I won't even make life harder for any independent contractors.' That was his promise but again there was another broken promise, as we saw in this budget—not a relieving of regulation but new regulatory burdens being imposed on businesses that engage independent contractors, in addition to the stalking and the terrorising that is going on of independent contractors and self-employed people through the tax office, Fair Work Australia and the Australian Building and Construction Commission, all of whom should have more pressing and high-priority tasks to pursue rather than hound and harass people out of independent contracting.

Who else can remember the Office of Best Practice Regulation and the annual reports which come out each year, only to discover that this government and the host office of the Office of Best Practice Regulation systematically ignore the advice on major decisions which then had significant implications particularly for small businesses and family enterprises. That effort to tidy up the regulatory process, to get some rigour and commitment to best practice regulation, rightsizing regulation—not excessive, punishing regulation that serves no good public policy purpose—could have been in this Statute Stocktake bill(No 1). That would have been worth while but again that is not in the bill either.

Then you wonder what about the minister, Senator Sherry, the Marcel Marceau of the frontbench. You never hear from him. He never speaks up for small business. Instead, he is the prophet of doom for booksellers around Australia at a time they are doing a terrific job in a difficult retail environment made worse by this incompetent government. What does Senator Sherry have to say? He was asked why, when almost half of everyone employed in the private sector is employed in a small business, the Rudd or the Gillard government will not have the small business minister in cabinet, to keep an eye on regulatory overreach and disproportionate burden being imposed on small businesses and family enterprises. He is responsible—and I quote with some 'clarity':

Whether or not I'm in cabinet, frankly, hmmm, I don't think is a great deal of help to small business.

As a minister ever been damned so comprehensively by his own words? He is not sure he can make a difference. He is certainly not making one now. He seems to imply that even if he were in Cabinet he still would not make a contribution. This in part explains why 300,000 jobs have been lost from small business since the election of the Labor government.

So who is on the beat checking out the regulatory burdens that are being imposed? Who is feeding into what I hoped would have been a much more substantial bill which really looked at deregulation systematically and more seriously? Thank goodness the coalition is focusing on that. The question of genuine concern confronting time-poor small businesses is: who is doing that work? Our commitment is that the coalition will do that work. Small businesses are time poor; they are increasingly tied up in red tape which reflects the sense that federal Labor has talked a good game but simply not delivered when it comes to red tape reduction.

Small business rightly recognises that time and effort spent on red tape comes at a cost. It is in the coalition's DNA to help small business get ahead and to help small businesses who have been forgotten by Labor and are suffering in a patchwork economy that, for small business, is threadbare. The coalition is determined to ensure that the government makes it easier and not harder for small business to prosper and grow. Excess red tape and regulation benefits no-one. It only means more costs for businesses, stops new jobs, stifles investment, obstructs innovation, impedes productivity and ultimately reduces the standard of living and opportunities available to Australians. The amount of regulation being imposed sees small businesses not waving goodbye to regulation but drowning under the weight of it as they are in a difficult economic climate being made worse by this incompetent government. Consol­idation of new regulations into one instrument can be little more than window dressing where one does not properly evaluate the cost and effort of complying with the regulatory obligations. Fewer words do not necessarily amount to reduced red-tape burdens and compliance costs. In fact, that might require small businesses to go out and get advice and interpretation. There might be fewer words and fewer passages but the burden, the cost and the impost may be much greater than if clearly articulated, right-sized, small business sensitive regulation had been developed in the first instance. Poor quality efforts at 'harmonisation' may be a bonus for big corp­orations operating in multiple jurisdictions while disadvantaging small business operators located in a single state where specific and familiar requirements are replaced with new and inappropriate 'one size fits all' rules. Small business costs and compliance impacts are clearly not a priority for this Labor government.

My friend and colleague the member for Goldstein, Mr Robb, has outlined a comprehensive coalition commitment to reduce red tape, the cost and the weight of the regulatory impost and to actually hold ministers and departments accountable for these outcomes. A coalition government would reduce the burden of red tape by at least $1 billion every year. It would do that by making bureaucrats tell us how many hours small businesses are spending filling out government paperwork and how much this costs. It would include things like what new software is required, advice from accountants, training and time spent, the actual cost, and effort required in meeting the compliance obligation being imposed upon them. This would involve obliging departments and bureaucrats to explain how many businesses will be impacted and what they will actually have to do to comply and then getting proper metrics from the Productivity Commission about what all this effort actually amounts to and reporting outcomes in departmental reports. It is about adopting a principle of minimum effective regulation for proposals to amend or extend compliance burdens to small business once being satisfied that the best and most effective and most justified public policy response is a regulatory one rather than other public policy options. It is about being fair dinkum about one in, one out.

These are issues I would have liked to have seen in this Statute Stocktake Bill—a comprehensive, fair dinkum commitment to actually deliver red-tape reductions. We have a real target and a practical action plan to achieve the removal of at least $1 billion in red-tape costs each and every year. Coalition ministers and their departments will have to meet targets and they will be held to account. We understand that for small business men and women less paperwork means a chance to earn better profits, boost sales, create opportunities for their community and, critically, spend more time with their families—because small business people are people too. (Time expired)

See this speech in context