Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It is $2.1 billion. We tasked the Productivity Commission to come up with a framework for auditing the performance of the regulators, which is now finalised and was released earlier today. It is very significant when we have 150 regulators at the Commonwealth level including major ones like the ATO, ASIC, APRA, ACMA and others much smaller like the Office of Gene Technology or the Passports Office or the like. These are all extremely significant changes and they are changes that are making people's interaction with government that much easier through the myGov and the MyTax site and they are reducing the overall compliance base.

It will be interesting to see whether the member for Watson and those opposite support changes to the corporations law, which will no longer allow 100 shareholders to call a special general meeting of a company like Woolworths, which has over 400,000 shareholders. One hundred shareholders can still put an issue on the agenda at a major special general meeting but they should not be allowed to call a special general meeting in itself. It is a measure which has been warmly received by the business community and will be a test for those opposite to see how job friendly and business friendly they really are.

I could go on. We have made extremely good progress in just the year we have been at the helm. We have got legislation through the Senate and we have banked reforms. Our first omnibus bill went through the Senate, our changes to the agricultural chemicals went through the Senate, our changes around classification went through the Senate, our changes around the future of financial advice went through the Senate and we are hopeful to get our one-stop shops through the Senate shortly. We have banked a lot of reforms that we have already announced but we still have a long way to go.

I want to thank the minister, for example, in job services, who made a very significant reform to ensure that there is less paperwork for job service providers—an incredible reform. To all the cabinet ministers, all the junior ministers and all the parliamentary secretaries who have made extremely significant reforms, we are very grateful. Most of all, can I think the Prime Minister because the Prime Minister has led this agenda. The Prime Minister himself has taken responsibility for the deregulation agenda by making it a standing item at COAG meetings, by driving change with his fellow premiers and chief ministers and by ensuring that his ministers and his Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet maintain the momentum that we currently have to cut red tape.

I also thank the senior members of the public service in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, all the deregulation units in the other portfolios and officers of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel who were responsible for drafting this legislation. This has been a team effort from start to finish.

I must tell you, the finish line is a long way away because the Productivity Commission has estimated that four per cent of GDP at least is tied up in red tape and compliance. Deloittes put out a report saying one million Australians are involved in the compliance sector. Clearly, this is too much. This has to change and, on this side of the House, we are determined to do it. These bills today are extremely important and are just one step along the way to cutting 1,000 pieces of regulation legislation and removing over 7,200 pages from the statute books, giving us a headline figure of $2.1 billion if we combine repeal day 1 and repeal day 2.

This is an important day for the parliament. This is an important day for the families, the businesses and the not-for-profits of the country and for the farmers of this country, who tell us that one dollar in every six dollars that they take at the farm gate is taken up in compliance. This is an important step in freeing up our economy ensuring we have higher productivity, growth, innovation, entrepreneurship and, most importantly of all, that we have more jobs for Australians today and into the future. I commend these bills to the House.

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