Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise on the Omnibus Repeal Day (Spring 2014) Bill 2014 and other associated bills. About a fortnight ago I attended the southern Sydney volunteer awards, where I was very proud to hand out the major prize on that day. Amongst the audience were many wonderful volunteers in our society. There were people who volunteered in lifesaving; in the Rural Fire Service; in aged care; and helping our kids with disabilities. On that day the overall prize winner for the best team of volunteers was a group called the form fillers. Their job, their volunteer service to our community, was to help people to fill out government forms. Out of all the valuable efforts of volunteers in our society that was considered the most important service that could be done in our local area. It was a team of 14 people. It is not to question or belittle the great work that they have done in any way but to raise the issue, the problem that we have in this nation—overburdensome government regulations and red tape.

To see the serious problem we have in this nation, we need look no further than the recent study on global competitiveness by the World Economic Forum. Out of 148 nations surveyed on the burden of government regulation, unbelievably, Australia was ranked 124th. So there are 123 other nations that have less burdensome government regulations than we have. The few nations that we were in front of included the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we tied with.

This is not something we should be laughing about, because this government regulation directly affects our economic prosperity and our wealth creation. During the recent MPI, we had members from the opposition coming in here and whinging about how there had been very low real wages growth. The reason for that is that we have not had the productivity increases. While we continue to burden our businesses, especially our small businesses, with more and more red tape, we prevent them from getting on with the job of creating wealth and creating those new businesses that drive our prosperity.

During this debate, I think we have seen perhaps the greatest evidence of the difference between our side and those opposite. The opposition have come in here and ridiculed this legislation. We know the record of the previous government. They used to boast about the number of regulations they had brought in. They actually thought it was a good thing that they brought in 21,000 new regulations. They thought this was wonderful. The simple difference is that the opposition, the modern day Labor Party, believe in central planning. If only they could get another team of government bureaucrats to go into that business to sort them out, to give them more red tape, things would be so much better! After six years of that, what have we seen? As this has always done throughout history, it has ended in tears. The unemployment queues in this nation are 200,000 people longer than when the previous Labor came to office.

Thomas Jefferson perhaps said it best when he said: 'That government is best which governs least'—and that I agree with. Just look at the disaster we have had as a result of previous government intervention. There is a thing called Maudlin's law, which says that for every leftist piece of government law introduced in a hurry to try and address some perceived crisis or remedy there will be at least one or more unintended consequence that has an equal or greater negative effect. This is what we saw during the previous six years. We saw the mining tax, which was supposed to create this wonderful revenue, cost our ATO $50 million in just establishing the compliance requirements—and it hardly collected more than that. We saw the carbon tax, which was designed to lower pollution. But after the carbon tax was implemented, it actually increased air pollution in Western Sydney, my area, to above World Health Organisation standards.

This is a very important piece of legislation before us. We must wind back the ever-growing burdensome obligations upon our business community, especially our small business community. We must have faith in them. We must free their hands to let them get on with the wealth creation that will drive the prosperity of this nation into the future. After all, as a nation, we now have to find $1 billion every single month, $33 million a day, just to pay the interest on the previous government's debt—and most of that goes overseas. We have to start clawing that back. The only way we can do it is by increasing the productivity of this nation, and that starts by this government reducing the burden of red tape that has been placed on our business community. I proudly commend the bill to the House.

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