Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Law Improvement Package No.1) Bill is a six-schedule Treasury omnibus bill. The coalition will be supporting this bill. The compliance burden and the complexity of the Corporations Act and the financial services legal and regulatory framework are consistent issues raised by stakeholders. Red tape is a growing challenge for business. Of course, support for the passage of this bill is no substitute for a government that is refusing to take responsibility for high inflation, rising mortgage payments, rising prices at the checkout and rising energy bills, just to name a few of the challenges facing Australians every day. Those challenges, sadly, are not addressed in this bill. We have a government that does not have the plan or the priorities to fix the economic problems facing Australians.

I turn to discuss the schedules to this bill. Schedules 1, 2 and 3 to the bill make amendments to implement recommendations made by the Australian Law Reform Commission in interim reports A and B of its review of the legislative frameworks for corporations and financial services regulation. The measures in these schedules are designed to make a number of technical amendments and corrections to simplify the law and improve its navigability, as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission. The changes seek to create a single glossary of defined terms in the Corporations Act; to repeal redundant provisions and correct errors; to improve clarity; and to unfreeze the Acts Interpretation Act so the current version applies to the Corporations Act and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act.

Schedule 4 to the bill makes amendments to the Insurance Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1991, the Life Insurance Act 1995 and the Insurance Act 1973. These acts are the enabling acts of certain legislative instruments regulating the insurance industry that are due to sunset on 1 October this year. Schedule 4 will update certain provisions in order to reflect more modern practices.

Schedule 5 to the bill transfers longstanding and accepted matters currently contained in three legislative instruments made by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to the Corporations Act and to the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. Schedule 6 to the bill amends various laws in the Treasury portfolio with a view to achieving the outcome that these laws operate in accordance with policy intent. It also makes minor changes to improve administrative outcomes and to remedy unintended consequences, as well as correcting technical and drafting defects.

The coalition supports measures which reduce red tape for business. Independent research has estimated that the annual cost to the economy of red tape is $176 billion a year. The costs of red tape to the economy are more than simply direct costs. They also include businesses which are never started, jobs which are never created and ambitions that are never fulfilled due to bureaucratic interference. This project is no small task. Treasury portfolio laws encompass over 50 acts containing thousands of provisions spanning corporations law, taxation, competition and consumer policy, and financial sector regulation. This bill needs to be the beginning, not the end, of reducing red tape and supporting deregulation.

This bill, as I've indicated, has many measures we on this side of the House can support. However, I have to note with regret that the government's actions in bringing this bill, which we support, do not in any way make up for the sad record of broken promises on franking credits, on superannuation taxes and on taxing unrealised capital gains, amongst other things. The sad reality is that many small businesses will be captured by the changes to superannuation made by this Labor government and by the changes to the law as regards unrealised capital gains which are a feature of those changes announced by this Labor government. The sad reality, also, is that many charities will lose out as a consequence of the changes Labor is proposing to make in relation to the application of the law concerning franking credits—again, changes which amount to a broken promise. The simple fact is that with these broken promises on superannuation taxes, at a time when cost-of-living pressures are soaring, Australians will be left worse off.

Of course, the fact that this government has chosen to break its oft-repeated promises in relation to superannuation is to be deplored from first principles, but this action is also to be deplored because it undermines confidence in Australia's superannuation system.

The money sitting in superannuation funds are not some piggy bank that governments can draw upon for tax-and-spend purposes. It represents the hard-earned money of Australians. Promises were made on several occasions before last year's election by the now Prime Minister and by the now Treasurer that there would be no changes to superannuation. What, in fact, this government has chosen to do, upon coming to power, is to announce changes that are entirely inconsistent with those commitments that were given before the election. This government has announced that a set of changes which will have the effect of doubling superannuation taxes faced by one in 10 Australians by the time they retire. It has announced changes which will have the effect of stopping companies in a range of circumstances from offering franking credits to Australian investors to super funds and to charities. It has announced changes that will have the effect of taxing unrealised capital gains in superannuation funds, a very significant change to an extremely long-standing principle in Australian tax legislation and policy, with the consequence that many Australian retirees will be required under these changes that Labor has announced to pay tax on money that they have not yet even earned.

Labor was dishonest in its approach in relation to superannuation. It was dishonest in its claim there would be no change to superannuation. And they have also been dishonest about the magnitude and impact of these changes and how many Australians will be affected. The government has claimed that fewer than 80,000 Australians will be affected. Independent research shows that that number is wildly wrong. By the time they retire, more than 500,000 Australians, in fact, are going to be hit by this new tax on superannuation. The government cannot explain how these changes will work, can't explain how many people will be affected. The Prime Minister has said it will impact one in 200 people. The finance minister has said it will impact one in 10. If the government can't explain it, how can Australians understand it? Australians would be right to draw the conclusion from the actions the government has taken on this front that they are looking enthusiastically for other areas where they can impose new taxes.

I say, on behalf of the coalition, that the deregulatory changes in this bill, so far as they go, are changes that the coalition will support. But they are changes being made in a broader context of a set of economic policies being carried out by this government which are generating higher inflation, rising mortgage payments, rising prices at the checkout, rising energy bills and a range of new taxes, even in the face of promises made before coming to government that there would be no such new taxes.

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