Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He wouldn't dare put a hat on it. The member for Macnamara was a new member in the last parliament, and he had very big hair. So he's got a bit of competition. But we discovered that this is not blow dried. This is genetic. This is just how things are.

Treasury laws amendment bills are some of the most exciting bills, of course, in the parliament, second only to statute law revision bills.

Treasury law amendment bills tend to be introduced throughout the term and often at very short notice, because one of the purposes of Treasury law amendment bills is to fix up loopholes, things that may not have been predicted, but, as a result of court cases, people have found ways around the taxation law for tax avoidance, and governments of the day have an urgent need to rush legislation in to close those loopholes.

I think it was a particularly welcome announcement late last year by the minister for industrial employment relations, Tony Burke, when he said that he was going to adopting the practice of Treasury law amendment bills in the workplace relations portfolio. Those opposite may be a little bit upset about this, because they've never seen a loophole used by employers to lower the pay of workers that they haven't liked. I never saw them, in their nine years in government, rush in an urgent piece of legislation to close down a loophole that employers used to cut or hold down the pay of workers. But we were inspired by the practice of these Treasury laws amendment bills, and we'll be adopting that in the coming months and years in relation to workplace relations laws.

With regard to the bill, schedules 1 to 3 are the product of very considered and deliberative policy processes based on the Australian Law Reform Commission's recommendations. They've been subject to detailed consultation, which I may get time to remark upon. I'm sure the member for Forde would appreciate being reminded of the dates of that consultation some months ago following the Australian Law Reform Commission's recommendations. Schedule 1 to 3 of the bill enact the recommendations remade by the ALRC in its interim report A and interim report B of its report of the legislative frameworks for the corporations and financial services regulation. Actually, I was privileged in the last term of the parliament to serve as a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. It's somewhat arcane, somewhat nerdy, a bit like the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, which I've been assigned to for some years. But it does really important work on behalf of the parliament and also on behalf of taxpayers, citizens and the business community in keeping an eye on the corporate regulators.

The corporations law is horrifically complex. I think the technical term would be 'about one bazillion pages' and is full of contradictions and has a whole range of particularly strange and arcane ways in which it needs to be applied and interpreted. My partner has actually recently gone to the bar as a corporations barrister, so I wish I knew less about the corporations law! But I smile and nod along as I'm told about new and interesting features we've discovered. Schedules 1 to 3 of the bill, importantly, improve the navigability and simplify this incredibly complex, voluminous legislation by creating a single glossary of all defined terms in section 9 of the Corporations Act. I think the member for Ford will be pleased to know I'll probably run out of time and won't actually read the glossary to you! But I could do so if you wish; maybe we could have a special reading later on. It also unfreezes the Acts Interpretation Act 1901, so the current version applies to the Corporations Act 2001 and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001; repeals redundant provisions, including definitions that are no longer used and which cross-reference to the repealed provisions; and corrects errors. Despite all of the professional integrity that the parliamentary counsel and others used to draft, unfortunately is the case that occasionally errors creep into legislation.

It was actually one of the genius moves of the former government—I think they abandoned it fairly soon after they tried it, but one of their particular genius moments was when they decided they would privatise some of the work of the parliamentary counsel. Wasn't that a glorious era! They thought they'd get the big law firms that make a whole lot of money from administering the law to start drafting the law. If you think PwC was a problem, how do you reckon it would go with the big law forms actually having the pen and writing legislation? I think eventually the former government backed off from that because they found that the quality wasn't very good. Who knew that the drafting of legislation is an art in itself? But it's an art that's held in the public sector under the guidance of the parliamentary counsel. Having been a public servant many years ago, I can tell you that arguing with the parliamentary counsel is not very fun. They're very particular; they have a very particular way of doing things, but that is for good reason—tried and tested.

When you listen to them, generally, it leads to fewer errors in legislation, like the ones that we're correcting today.

The bill will improve clarity 'with a particular focus on terms defined as having more than one meaning and definitions containing substantive obligations'. In a sense, it is reducing complexity and cutting red tape. Actually, in the Federation Chamber some years ago—the place where good speeches go to die—the now Attorney-General made me a bet that I couldn't speak for 15 minutes on the Statue Law Revision Bill. I thought, 'Alright; I'm going to do this,' and I won the bet. I threatened my staff for months afterwards that I'd publish it on my social media and further distort and hurt the algorithm. I learnt an interesting thing about the former government while researching that bill. Remember Tony Abbott's cutting red tape, Deputy Speaker Goodenough? You were here for that. He was going to cut red tape; it was one of his big things. He had this weird, dodgy accounting mechanism where he was adding up all the economic value that he was creating by cutting red tape. When you delved into the detail of the Statue Law Revision Bill, you realised the whole thing was an accounting mirage. He was counting $50,000 of economic efficiency for removing semicolons. Apparently, this was going to make the legal profession and the businesses trying to comply with the law that much more efficient because they would no longer have to look at the semicolons and the superfluous and's. If you'd be interested, I could send you a Hansard copy of that speech, Member for Forde—if you have a sleeping disorder of any sort or you just need to nod off to sleep.

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