Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to make a contribution on this important piece of legislation, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Law Improvement Package No. 1) Bill 2023. This is about the third or fourth time I've spoken on a TLAB in my one year here in parliament. I know they're sometimes a bit dense on detail, but, Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander and colleagues, I'm one of those MPs who tend to like to delve into the detail here, because what these TLABs often do is the heavy lifting of the government. They change our rules, regulations and laws so that the policy ambitions of a new government can be put through.

It gives me great pleasure to make a contribution, as we've heard from other members of parliament here today, because within this TLAB we have six schedules that attempt to clean up a lot of legislation and act upon recommendations from some really important organisations, and schedules 1 to 3 start with exactly that. They look to act on recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission. This is an incredibly important organisation. The Australian Law Reform Commission undertakes research and provides recommendations to reform the law on topics that have been selected by the Attorney-General of Australia. Not all of them are taken up by government, but, if we look at the history of the ALRC, 85 per cent of its reports have been either substantially or partially implemented, making the ALRC one of the most effective and influential agents for legal reform in Australia.

In this TLAB, what the government is doing is taking some of the ALRC's very important recommendations and putting them into law. Schedules 1 to 3 of this bill enact recommendations made by the Australian Law Reform Commission in interim reports A and B of its really important Review of the Legislative Framework for Corporations and Financial Services Regulation. The purpose of the review was to inquire into the potential simplification and rationalisation of our financial services law. What schedules 1 to 3 of the bill intend to do is improve the navigability of and simplify the law by unfreezing the Acts Interpretation Act so that the current version applies to the Corporations Act and to create a single glossary of defined terms in section 9 of the Corporation Act. Importantly, the bill cleans out some of these laws. It repeals redundant provisions, including definitions that are no longer used, and it cross-references to repealed provisions. It also corrects errors. Believe it or not, sometimes there are a few errors in legislation and documents, so, importantly, we sometimes need to bring some correction to the parliament so that we can clean up some of the errors. It also improves clarity, with a particular focus on terms defined as having more than one meaning, so that definitions contain substantive obligations.

This is really dense content, but they're important parts of the working of government, and I commend schedules 1 to 3. I am encouraged by those from the other side who have spoken on this already. They, too, see the benefit in doing this spring cleaning on some of these bills and legislation, so I thank the opposition for their support of this bill.

Schedule 4 speaks to insurance. It seeks to make amendments to the Insurance Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1991 and a number of other insurance acts. Those acts are enabling acts of certain legislative instruments regulating the insurance industry. They're due to sunset on 1 October 2023. Sunsetting is the automatic repeal of legislative instruments after a certain date unless action is taken to retain them. It's an important measure that governments of all persuasions use to make sure that instruments are kept up to date and only remain in force for as long as they are needed.

In my short time in this place, I've seen sunsetting used for good benefit. Our policy to reduce taxes on electric vehicles—and I'll repeat that: our policies to reduce taxes on electric vehicles, which was opposed by those opposite—had a sunset clause in it on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

I thought that was a good amendment by the crossbench in the other place because it recognised that plug-in hybrid vehicles were a good starting point for people to make the transition to electric vehicles. In that piece of legislation back then, sunsetting was able to acknowledge that, so that for three years people could buy plug-in hybrid vehicles—which are a mix of electric vehicles and traditional powered vehicles in one. They were able to use the sunsetting clause to acknowledge that it's important, as we transition out of fossil fuel dominated transport industries to low-emission transport, that there are provisions for those vehicles in particular to form part of our very important tax breaks to businesses and to consumers to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles. Sunsetting has been used over and over by governments of all persuasions, and I fully endorse the measures that are contained within this bill in regard to sunsetting.

The amendments in this TLAB will help ensure that the sunsetting insurance instruments that are still necessary are up to date and fit for purpose. The amendments in schedule 4 are primarily technical and include updating to certain provisions to reflect modern communication practices. And don't we need that! I know, Deputy Speaker Freelander, that you follow the medical and health industry quite closely, and I know in that industry faxes are still used sometimes, aren't they?

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