David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking in favour of this terrific motion moved by my friend the member for Mitchell and so passionately and ably seconded by the member for Reid. This matter really opens up a very clear fault line between the position of those opposite and the position of the government. This is really fundamental stuff. On the one hand over there you have a government-knows-best, bureaucracy-knows-best, 'We know that what's required is more regulation, more legislation, more forms for businesses to fill out,' philosophy, and what you have over here is the opposite. That is a philosophy that says the best thing we can do as a government is unshackle and free the people and small businesses of Australia to be their best. That is the difference.

We do not believe that the government is well placed to tell small businesses what to do about every aspect of their daily lives. We believe that, whilst there is a place for limited regulation, the right word is 'limited'. I have had quite a bit of experience in small and large business and so perhaps can speak on this from both sides of the equation. I would have to say that one of the worst experiences of my career in business was the burden you have in small business of filling out forms for the government. There is nothing worse after spending 10, 12 or 14 hours a day working on the thing that actually matters for your business—selling a product, developing a product and hiring your staff, all of which is hard and uncertain, and you never know what is going to happen six or 12 months down the track. And you work your guts out. Sometimes you have people relying on you—people whose mortgages depend on the success of the business you are managing. And the worst thing is getting home at the end of that 12 or 14 hours and then spending a whole bunch of time filling out forms for government. We believe that that sort of intervention by government should be as limited as possible.

There are some fantastic examples of deregulation that the member for Kooyong has shepherded through this place in recent weeks. One of them I wanted to speak about—shepherded very ably through the House—affected my electorate in particular in recent weeks. It is the change for Chinese business visitors, who contribute an enormous amount to our economy, especially in my electorate of Banks. Previously, every 12 months they had to fill out another form for a visa. As you can imagine, many of these people are in frequent contact in my electorate and across Australia. It is a huge burden—lots of red tape every 12 months. There is a sensible form now: a multiple-entry three-year visa for Chinese business visitors. That is a very simple and sensible reform.

What about the standard agreement template? It is hard enough to get your mind around one government form, let alone 50 of them. Government forms using the bureaucratic language of which they are fond are not always the easiest things to deal with, but we had a situation previously where there were dozens of very confusing forms. The standard agreement template, which has been pushed through by the member for Kooyong, is a terrific initiative.

What about the credit card change? Previously, if it was over $10,000, you had to go through the whole invoicing procedure. Obviously there are credit checks involved. There is a whole lot of complexity there. Now payments up to $20,000 can be done by credit card. It is simple, it is what happens in the real world and it is what should happen with the government as well.

The Kung-Fu Panda story I probably do not need to describe again: 3D classification. It was just silly, and it is good to see that important reform.

The paid parental leave reform was championed by the Minister for Small Business. Getting rid of that penalty is, again, taking away these processes that do not add value, get in the way and make life harder for small business. That is what we believe in.

And what about ACMA? Previously ACMA had to investigate every single complaint no matter how absurd or dated. I have seen some of those complaints, and they can be absurd and dated. It is very good that there is now discretion around whether or not to proceed with complaints.

It is a terrific initiative by the member for Mitchell to move this motion, and I commend it to the House.

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