Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If there's one thing that businesses and individuals have complained about regularly over the 15 years I've been involved in politics, and the 20 years before that that I was in small business—and it's something that we all pretty much agree on—it's the need to reduce red tape. It seems like such an obvious thing to do, but many governments have tried and failed to reduce duplication and inefficiency.

Not only does this bill achieve what many have failed to do but it does it in a context of improving productivity. In fact, it does so much more than that. The Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2025 is the latest example of tangible reform to come out of the Economic Reform Roundtable, which identified that fit-for-purpose regulation is a key enabler for Australia's economic potential. This bill takes a whole-of-government approach to amending regulation to ensure that it remains fit for purpose in this the 21st century. The government understands that regulation that is not fit for purpose or that duplicates processes frustrates Australians and also drives up the cost of doing business. So the aim of these changes is to improve productivity and support economic resilience, without reducing necessary protections.

The bill contains 60 measures that amend 28 acts, repeal two acts and affect the operation of 13 Commonwealth agencies. It reflects our commitment to connecting government services so that Australians can get the help they need faster. But one of the most important things this bill does is provide a first step towards the implementation of a 'tell us once' approach to government services. It supports this idea of just telling us once within Services Australia, reducing the number of times that Australians will be asked to provide the same information across the agency's programs.

I became a big fan of the 'tell us once' principle a few years ago after a visit to Estonia. Estonia has led the world in ensuring that its citizens have a very smooth interaction with government agencies. Now, it isn't appropriate to replicate everything they do, but one of the key things they did was adopt a principle that you have to give a piece of information to government only once. In fact, they go even further, saying that the piece of information has to be useful to at least two government agencies. They have an extraordinary digital system, based on this idea that they call the once-only principle. In fact, the state is not allowed to ask citizens for the same information twice. In other words, if you give your address or a family member's name to the census bureau, the health insurance provider won't ask you for it again later. And no department of any government agency can make citizens repeat information that is already stored in its database or that of some other agency.

Of course, we're not in a position to go quite as far as Estonia has. We have three tiers of government. We have a very different population. But that principle of 'tell us once' is underpinning some of the changes we are supporting here in this bill today. I want to give some specific examples—and I promise, I'm not going to go through the 28 different acts that are amended and the 60 measures, but I am going to give some tangible examples of what's involved. One example of the measures in this bill is about removing barriers to digital evidence of Australian citizenship. In order to do that, we need to amend the Australian Citizenship Act and the Electronic Transactions Act to remove barriers to digital evidence to show that you're an Australian. This paves the way for Home Affairs to develop a technical solution which is going to allow for the issue of digital evidence of your Australian citizenship, making it easier and a more reliable proof of citizenship, obviously reducing the costs, and giving further security for citizens. So the development of a digital solution will be required before digital citizen certificates can be issued to Australian citizens, and of course privacy impacts will be considered during this process.

But to achieve the outcome we have to fix two acts because of stuff that's in them, one that was made in 1999 and one that was made in 2007. That's an example of just one of the 60 changes this bill deals with. Another example—and I've been through them all; there are a number that relate to healthcare identifiers. They're quite technical, so I’m choosing the ones that are reasonably straightforward. This is one I really like, called 'Simplifying information sharing for connected service delivery'. This one involves changes that address a limitation that means that certain officers in Services Australia can't share protected information for the purposes of a Centrelink program or a Medicare program, and that means it limits their ability to deliver programs that meet the end-to-end needs of their customers. So, the change ensures that legal arrangements for sharing protected information are brought into a more contemporary operational structure. It also ensures that the arrangements for recording, disclosing and using protected information for other Centrelink programs and Medicare programs are aligned with the arrangements already in place for a whole lot of other programs.

I'm going to give you an example of this one, because this one involves amending one of the 1999 tax acts, the Paid Parental Leave Act, the Student Assistance Act 1973, the Child Support (Assessment) Act 1989 and the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 1988 as well as the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010, which I think I've mentioned twice there. Let's bring it alive with an example. Let's take Michael. He is a mutual customer of both Medicare and Centrelink. He receives a family tax benefit for his seven-year-old child and has a current bank account recorded with Centrelink. He hasn't updated his bank account details with Medicare. Now, he is one of approximately 980,000 Australians who are owed unpaid Medicare benefits totalling more than $270 million. Legislative changes can allow Medicare to access the payment destination information of the current mutual Centrelink customers for the purposes of delivering that unpaid Medicare benefit to people who may not even know that they are eligible for these funds. With these changes, Medicare staff will confirm with Michael that the bank account is the same as the one he has recorded for Centrelink, and he then receives a refund for previous medical costs and appointments. A tiny part of our system where one bit doesn't talk to the other means that we cannot give this streamlined approach through Services Australia.

I've asked, 'Give me tangible examples of how this will actually affect everyday Australians,' and here's another example of this change. Let's take Jane, who's left her family home to escape family and domestic violence. She is afraid that her ex-partner might find her and her child. She changes both her and her child's surnames, moves to a new house and creates her own new bank account. She needs to tell all the government agencies about her updated name, address, bank account and relationship status. Implementing the changes in this bill will support streamlining that information sharing. Instead of needing to contact Centrelink, child support and others separately, she can update her details once and consent to them being updated for other programs also. This is the practical result of just some of the changes contained in this bill.

I want to give one example of this tell-us-once approach which is an amendment to the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999. This will allow the implementation of initial changes to reduce the need for people to provide the same information to Services Australia multiple times, and it may also improve the speed at which their claims are assessed. Currently, in some cases, when a Services Australia customer wants to transfer from one social security payment to another, more appropriate one, they're required to submit a new claim and provide information that has previously been provided. They need to replicate that. When they're processing transfers, staff must conduct checks relating to many elements of the claim. This is—as it was the first time the customer did it—a very time-consuming process both for the person involved and for the staff. It can, and I know it does, cause frustration for my constituents who've had to do this, to provide information they've already given—people literally say to us, 'But they already have that; they already know that information about me'—even if it's the same agency but they're seeking a different payment. By improving the legal arrangements for transferring customers between payments, we can alleviate these frustrations for both my constituents and also the people who work so hard at Services Australia.

These are just some of the examples in this omnibus bill. Hopefully, I've got time to finish with one other example, which relates to an area that every MP knows is highly sensitive: childcare subsidisation and child wellbeing. This is about changing language in our legislation. It's an amendment to one of the family assistance tax system acts. It relates to a child at serious risk of abuse or neglect, but it changes that phrase to 'a child in need of wellbeing support'. Let me explain what this is. We want to encourage families who may have been deterred by the stigmatising language in the act to apply for the additional childcare subsidy, which would support their child to get greater access to early childhood education and care. It's designed for vulnerable children. Research conducted by the Department of Education highlighted issues with the additional childcare subsidy child wellbeing language, particularly for people from First Nations backgrounds and domestic violence victims. The language in the act literally says you have to say that your child is at serious risk of abuse or neglect. Changing that to the phrase 'a child in need of wellbeing support 'is far less stigmatising language. If something like that can provide better access to families, especially to those children, to get into early childhood education and have the benefits of quality early childhood education—it might sound small to many people, but that is one of the really significant things in this very large bill. It's something that was also highlighted by the Productivity Commission's 2023 review into early childhood education and care.

There are many, many more, but time prevents me from going into the detail. There'll be a whole lot of people who really love the one amending the Marriage Act so that there can be further uptake of digital ID services for people getting married rather than all the paper stuff. There are a whole lot of things that drag these bills into the 21st century, that recognise we have incredible capacity digitally and that will increase productivity, using our data and digital technologies to improve access to government services. I think it is worth remembering that the context of all of this is allowing government, individuals and small businesses to be more efficient and productive—doing more in the same amount of time—so I commend this bill to the House, the first of a series of reforms that will improve productivity across government and the economy.

See this speech in context