Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to superannuation, the Liberal Party has about as much grace as a refrigerator falling down a flight of stairs—and it has had about as many positions as that refrigerator on the way down, as well. This is a government conflicted by the issues of superannuation and what it means for our economy, for ordinary working people and, more broadly, for our national savings, which have now tipped over the $2 trillion mark thanks to the superannuation guarantee we are debating today. With that said, Labor of course supports any positive changes and supports any modernisation or assistance that can be brought about through change to the economy and more broadly to Australian small and medium enterprises. Labor does support reducing the regulatory burden on small business and will therefore support this Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Amendment Bill. Labor supports reducing costs on small business. We understand that reducing costs for small and medium enterprises helps them to generate the ability to not only grow their business but to employ more people as well. Labor will be supporting the changes in this bill as they reduce compliance costs on small business and, importantly, do not reduce an employer's obligation to make superannuation guarantee payments for their employees.

This bill amends the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 to remove the obligation for employers to offer a choice of superannuation fund to temporary resident employees or when superannuation funds merge. Currently employers must give a standard choice form to employees within 28 days of their beginning employment. Many temporary employee residents already do not exercise choice of fund or complete the choice of fund form and are therefore placed in their employer's default fund. That, of itself, is all right. Also under current arrangements employers may be required to give employees a standard choice form when the employee's superannuation benefits are transferred from a chosen fund or a default fund to a successor fund under a fund merger arrangement. Under the new arrangements in this bill, employers are not required to give employees a standard choice form. If they hold a temporary visa, as defined by the Migration Act 1958, these new arrangements will capture New Zealand citizens—even though they can generally stay in Australia indefinitely. Additionally, the new arrangements in this bill mean that employers are not required to give employees a standard choice form when their superannuation benefits are transferred from a chosen fund or a default fund to a successor fund as a result of a superannuation fund merger arrangement.

The bill will reduce costs and compliance burdens on employers—mainly small businesses—who hire people on a temporary basis, through a temporary visa, by reducing the requirement to provide them with choice of fund forms. Importantly, employers will still be required to make superannuation guarantee payments on behalf of their employees, and their employees will still be able to choose their own fund if they wish. Labor's record on reducing red tape in many areas is well known and in this area, in particular, when Labor was in government we repealed 16,794 acts and regulations—an important step in reducing the regulatory burden on small business and the community alike. Under the Seamless National Economy reforms carried out by the former Labor government, and conducted largely through the Council of Australian Governments process, just the first 17 reforms that Labor put in place reduced business costs by over $4 billion every single year. Our commitment in government to continually reduce regulation was considered part of the normal operations of what a good government does, and that ought to continue to be the case—any good government should continually look at reducing red tape and regulatory burdens wherever that is possible and it is the efficient and right thing to do.

In addition, in 2008 under Labor COAG agreed to implement regulation and competition reforms under the National Partnerships Agreement to deliver a seamless national economy. Thirty-six separate reforms were covered by this agreement, comprised of 27 deregulation priorities, eight areas of competition reform and reform to regulation making and review processes. As of July 2012, 17 of the deregulation priorities and three of the competition reforms were complete. Then, in May 2012, the Productivity Commission assessed 17 of the Seamless National Economy reforms in its report Impacts of COAG reforms: Business regulation and VET. The Productivity Commission suggested that the 17 reforms that it modelled could increase GDP by around 0.4 per cent, which represents over $6 billion per year, and reduce business costs by around $4 billion per year. That is real reform—real assistance to the community and real assistance to small business. And we did that as part of normal good government. A very good example of this reform work was Standard Business Reporting. SBR commenced on 1 July 2010 and it offered Australian business, accountants, bookkeepers and tax agents a quicker and simpler way to lodge reports with government. The Productivity Commission estimates $500 million worth of potential benefits from this reform over nine years. SBR simplifies business to government reporting by removing unnecessary or duplicated information from government forms, using business software to pre-fill forms automatically with relevant information, providing an electronic interface to report to agencies directly from accounting software and providing a single secure sign-on for online users. Many people in the community may not even know that exists, and that is a really good thing if it is done seamlessly. It is about business doing better business with government; it is about the Seamless National Economy agenda and it is about keeping our economy progressing forward. It is about assisting small business in quiet but significant ways, not just having the vain bonfires of empty pages of regulations so outdated that they are completely meaningless—but perhaps that is for another time.

It was the former Labor government that introduced the National Business Names Registration Service for a single online registration process, removing the requirement for a small business to register in each state or territory, lowering the cost to business from over $1,000 for registering in each jurisdiction to under $100 for a single national registration. For the first time it could be done 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for the convenience of small business—again, a truly great reform. It was a difficult, costly and complex reform but one that Labor undertook and did very well. So successful has that reform process been that the current government is now talking about privatising it and selling it off, because it is making so much progress and doing such a great job. Again, that is a debate for another time. It was the former Labor government that introduced the Small Business Superannuation Clearing House, enabling small business to pay all their employee super contributions to a single location

These are good changes—good reforms that have made an enormous difference to small business. Labor is really proud that we not only came up with these ideas but also implemented them.

Talking of small business and the important changes contained in this bill and making business for small business easier, there are many other reforms that Labor put in place in the same spirit. There has been a lot of debate about supporting small business lately. Of course 'lately' is 'just lately' for the government. For Labor it has been a longer term proposition—in government, particularly, because that is when we have been able to actually deliver real reforms and real assistance, particularly in those difficult dark days of the global financial crisis. In particular, we understood the need for cash flow assistance to small business.

We have seen the government now place asset write-off measures in the budget, and Labor will of course support these measures. We have done that in the quickest possible time frame given to us by the government's timetabling and scheduling of their own bills in relation to this. Labor is very proud to be able to assist the parliament to be able to deliver on these in the timeliest manner. Let it not be said that Labor delayed in any way any of these measures by even one minute, because that simply has not been the case. Labor has in fact moved to expedite this and lend any assistance possible to the government, recognising that the damage that the government did in its previous budget, a little bit over 12 months ago, now needed urgent—'emergency', in the government's own words; one might say 'crisis'—repair of the damage they did in that previous budget. So Labor was very enthusiastic about supporting the government's new-found will to actually support small business. We were very pleased to be able to do that and to see that assistance actually reach small business.

But it was also a Labor government that introduced the instant asset write-off. The exact same policy that the government now uses and says is completely new was the exact same one that they took away just a bit over 12 months ago. In fact, they have not even changed the name of it, which is the really curious bit. But it was Labor that increased the instant asset write-off from $1,000 to $5,000 and then further increased it to $6½ thousand—a really good number; a really good measure of where the majority of small business actually expend funds. This was a really good setting. We are very supportive of the $20,000 that the government have now capped it at; we think that is good as well. But, like government, we will acknowledge: you can only spend money that you have; otherwise, you have to borrow it. I certainly would encourage small business to make the best use of the accelerated depreciation assistance that is in place but of course to be very careful and to seek advice on how they do that. Unfortunately, it was, though, a Liberal government that cut it back just recently to just $1,000. This was a retrograde step. This was something that was very bad for small business—something that made small business reel with uncertainty but also created this environment of a loss of confidence that was reflected in many, many consumer surveys and small business surveys. The government would have been sitting and scratching its head over how it would repair the damage that the government had done—some, in part, in this most recent budget. 'A lot', some would say, but 'a lot late' others would say as well.

Of course they did not support it when Labor introduced the exact same things. Then, when they did get elected, they did cut back those same measures, because they said they were unfunded—that is right, they said they were unfunded, and they said that there was just no money for these measures so they would have to cut them. As to that principle: at the time when they cut them the deficit was some $17 billion; now they have reintroduced an even higher cap rate of $20,000, but curiously the deficit now is larger under the Liberal government. The Liberal government inherited a smaller deficit—around the $13 billion mark. It was a $17 billion deficit in their first budget. And now, according to budget paper No. 1, it is $35 billion. The deficit has gone up not once but twice, and significantly in anyone's terms. If, at the time, at $13 billion, this was an emergency which needed fire engines to come and put out the fires of emergency and crisis—or even, let us say, at $17 billion—then that a deficit apparently now at $35 billion is sort of okay is curious thinking. I would have thought it was slightly worse, given that it has doubled. Interestingly, on that, you would question: where is the money coming from to fund these things? Well, the debt has actually got bigger as well. That would not surprise people.

But the debt has actually really blown out. It blew out between budgets—two Liberal budgets, of course. In two Liberal budgets, the debt has blown out to $35 billion. It is quite substantial. It is huge. And this adding to the debt of course does create some problems. I will not do it here because I will not have time in the minutes I have left to fully explore these things in depth, but some might ask the government legitimately—

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