Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Statute Update (Winter 2017) Bill 2017. I'm glad we're in the Federation Chamber because, for most of the last four years, we've had to endure this particular legislation being dealt with in the House of Representatives itself. The Abbott government actually thought these repeal days were something that would rival New Year's Day in the affection of the Australian public. We saw extraordinary fanfare, with press releases talking about millions of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars. I remember the former member for Eden-Monaro congratulated himself and the Abbott and Turnbull governments for saying they'd gotten rid of $4.5 billion of regulatory expense, or burden, on the Australian economy and Australian businesses et cetera. It's extraordinary. It was a war on commas and semicolons and getting rid of obsolete provisions. It's simply amazing.

What happened was there was a blue book, Deputy Speaker Hastie. You weren't here at the time, but there was a blue book. Andrew Robb, Joe Hockey and, I think, Warren Truss were there. The member for Warringah used to hold it close to his chest like it was some sort of political manifesto and say, 'This is what we're going to do when we get in.' So you had the member for Kooyong, the member for Pearce and the former member for Eden-Monaro in charge of these repeal days. It was amazing. It was another play straight out of the Republican playbook. It was the Tea Party writ large—'These repeal days would make a huge difference to the Australian economy.'

When I was the shadow minister for ageing, one day, in particular, was quite extraordinary. There was $1.8 million in savings in total and $1.1 million was in aged care, but there was actually one piece of legislation that had $3,000 worth of savings in it. There were many pieces of legislation that had no savings in them, and we had to endure this hyperbole from the government about what was going on. So we're here in the Federation Chamber, doing the right thing. When we were in government, we used to have these in the Federation Chamber—as it's now called—where we would actually get rid of redundant provisions and pieces of legislation. They got rid of hundreds of pieces of legislation. Some of them had been obsolete for decades and had never been used.

There's a policy vacuum in this government when they congratulate themselves all the time about what they're doing—getting rid of a few typos and commas. It looks like a pretty awful government when that's what it's all about. A statute update is a typically non-controversial process of simply getting rid of grammatical and other errors and getting rid of obsolete acts. That's what it's about. This is something that Labor governments do as a matter of routine. I'm pleased, can I say, that the Turnbull government is acting a bit more like a Labor government and actually dealing with this in the Federation Chamber, rather than putting a whole day aside in the House of Representatives to deal with such stuff of nonsense.

The measures within this bill simply highlight the absence of any substantive policy that the government's undertaking, which will be of good reform to the Australian economy. In fact, this piece of legislation's one of the better pieces of legislation of the Turnbull government—and that's not saying very much at all. Item 3 of the bill amends the heading of subsection 25(1) of the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act of 2005 to better clarify the subsection. In the normal course of events, I wouldn't make much comment about that, but when they're rolling out the National Broadband Network and we're dealing with their provision in relation to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, I think I have to say something about it. The rollout of the National Broadband Network's an absolute disgrace—

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