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

In the first repeal day, in March, more than 10,000 pieces of legislation and regulation were repealed and more than 50,000 pages removed from the statute books. This time round, in the second repeal day, we will be removing more than 1,000 pieces of regulation and legislation and more than 7,200 pages from the statute books.

The Labor Party cannot have it both ways. They cannot say on the one hand, 'Oh, this is so trivial; this is the normal job of government to correct the statute books,' and on the other hand have the shadow Assistant Treasurer go out there in print this week and accuse the government of removing vital protections for people in the financial services sector and also in the not-for-profit sector. You cannot have it both ways. We are either making substantial reforms or we are not.

The reality is that Universities Australia, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and many other groups, like ACCI, have come out and lauded this government for taking deregulation seriously. They have lauded the $2.1 billion worth of savings that we have announced and they have lauded us for setting up deregulation units within every minister's portfolio. They have said, 'Thank you for setting up ministerial advisory committees where we bring in outside expertise and advice to help the ministers understand where the priorities are for deregulation.'

We have changed the remuneration KPIs of senior public servants to better align the performance indicators with our priorities and our commitments to capping red tape. We have set ourselves an annual net target of $1 billion a year in reducing compliance for families, individuals, small businesses and the not-for-profits of Australia. It does not help those opposite to know that we have actually got to over $2 billion and we have smashed through our $1 billion target. That is what they do not like about this. They do not like the politics of our success, rather than the substance of our reforms, because, when we passed the omnibus bill through this House in March of this year, it was successful in getting through the Senate.

The member for Goldstein would like to know, as he is a former head of the Farmers' Federation, that we changed the rules and processes around agricultural and veterinary chemicals. We also changed the rules around classification and removed the red tape there by getting our reforms through the Senate. Our changes to the Future of Financial Advice also went through the Senate. We have made a number of other reforms, where we have banked well over $1 billion, which are improving the lives of Australians.

There are a couple of consistent themes you will hear from the dozens of my colleagues today who are speaking on these bills. There are a couple of key themes. Firstly, we are making life easier for people who interact with government. We are saying that a system like myGov, which allows five million Australians to have an account and to access Medicare, Centrelink and a centralised online portal, is making their lives easier. There is myTax, which is allowing up to 1.4 million Australians to get prepopulated tax returns, because the government is already in the possession of key data, like their dividends on their shares, their interest on their bank accounts or their income. That has been prepopulated by the government. That, again, is helping them.

We are saying to the people of Australia and the builders of Australia, 'You don't have to be excluded from government contracts when we are building Defence housing in small regional and remote communities. With changes around the Federal Safety Commissioner's accreditation, you can now participate. We are saying to 32,500 small businesses who do not pay any GST that they no longer have to submit a BAS. We are saying to the 430,000 small businesses who pay their GST and submit a BAS that they do not need to go through the PAYG system. These are significant deregulation reforms.

What about our one-stop shops? The member for Watson, who was the former Minister for the Environment, would have loved to have got that reform introduced with the support of every state and territory, but the member for Flinders has done that and he has got the assessment approvals. We now hope to get the final legislation through the Senate. That is $420 million worth of deregulation. The member for Goldstein made significant changes to the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, Efic, by actually allowing the export of non-capital goods by small and medium enterprises to get the direct support of Efic rather than those businesses having to go through the expensive process of taking a bank guarantee from Efic, going to fill in forms and paying an extra margin to the banks. It is significant deregulation reforms like that that are helping our exporters, helping our employers and helping our small businesses.

I was so proud to be part of a government that released the competitiveness and industry agenda just a couple of weeks ago. Central to that agenda was an important deregulation reform which meant that systems, products and services that are approved overseas in trusted international jurisdictions can now be accepted into Australia much more readily, with only an extra layer of compliance put on when the regulators themselves can prove there is a very good reason to do so. We had the head of Cochlear, Chris Roberts, come out and say that this is making a tangible difference not just to his business but to the thousands of people suffering hearing defects who benefit from his company's products.

This deregulation agenda is the meat and potatoes of this government. It sits alongside budget repair, infrastructure and reducing the overall tax burden. Many of my colleagues in this place are going to make substantial contributions to this House. It deserves to be supported today. We look to the Labor Party to support good reform and not just support their own political interests.

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