Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) 2011. The purpose of this bill is to repeal 39 redundant special appropriations relating to the Commonwealth's financial framework. This would include the abolition of 39 special appropriations, including the repeal of one statutory special account and 25 redundant acts in their entirety. It is essentially a government housekeeping bill and has no material consequence in relation to the provision of government programs, funding or new policy.

The government committed to regular stocktakes of special appropriation vehicles in response to the Operation Sunlight: overhauling budgetary transparency report released in December 2008. The bill is part of an ongoing bipartisan commitment to clean up the statute books, as has occurred through five previous financial framework legislation amendment acts between 2005 and 2010 and a Statute Stocktake (Regulatory and Other Laws) Act 2009. Examples of the types of redundant legislation that this bill seeks to repeal include Papua New Guinea Loan (International Bank) Act 1974,which related to the Commonwealth's guarantee of a loan that PNG took out with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This loan has since been repaid, so the act is redundant. Second, the State Grant (Special Assistance to South Australia) Act 1960, which granted financial assistance to South Australia during the 1959-60 financial year. That appropriation has been long spent. While this bill is non-controversial in nature, it poses a question of how many other redundant pieces of legislation remain on the statute book. The government is drawing an extremely long bow in its promotion of this bill as part of its commitment to reducing red tape, at least within the government's own administration. But what it really does, in my view, is remind us of the failures of this government when it comes to reducing red tape and easing the regulatory burden on Australian businesses. Many sectors of our economy are choking in unnecessary red tape, regulations and reporting requirements. I think there has been a cultural shift over many years, and it has been accelerated most significantly in the last four years, where regulation has become a very major cost burden across so many areas of organisations and businesses. It is human nature to want to grow your business and bureaucrats are no different. They want to grow their business, and their business is regulation. They are very good at growing their business. In fact, they are expert at growing their business.

In 2007 the Rudd-Gillard government made a big pitch to business based on their commitment to cutting red tape. Labor promised to make life easier for business by pursuing a 'one in, one out' rule for new regulation. They got a lot of mileage out of the one in, one out rule for new regulation. No new law was supposed to be introduced unless an existing one was taken off the books, but instead let's look at the record. Labor have imposed 220 new regulations for each one that they have removed—220 for one, not one for one. It is a huge disparity. The more regulation that government puts on business, the more time, money and effort business people have to divert from real work to filling in forms for bureaucrats in Canberra. The corporate reporting require­ments have massively increased across so many areas. Excess red tape and regulation benefits no-one. It only means more costs for business. It stops new jobs, stifles investment, lowers innovation, lessens productivity and ultimately creates a lower standard of living for Australians. The morale of hundreds of thousands of small business people in particular is lowered immeasurably by the significant growth of regulation.

The coalition will always be a pro-business party. We have demonstrated that in opposition with the policies we have put forward for small business and the stance we have taken against job-destroying new taxes. The carbon tax and mining tax will undermine our competitive advantage. The carbon tax, which will morph into an ETS, an emissions trading scheme, will be the most bureaucratic scheme you could possibly devise. The eventual emissions trading scheme will not be one scheme; it will be 1,000 schemes because there will be 1,000 Australian companies involved. Already most of those companies have spent in excess of $1 million, some of them several million dollars, seeking to start to comply with the set-up arrangements that are required for this scheme. Thousands of bureaucrats are crawling all over these 1,000 companies, and think of the regulation, intervention and involvement of bureaucracy when you get $10 billion of tax to recycle and churn.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I will give you an example of regulation gone mad under this government's watch. Last year the Australian Securities and Investments Commission sent a secret directive to our top financial services companies requiring them to complete an 800-question audit—800 questions. It is breathtaking. And if they make a mistake in that document the next thing is they will be hauled before the courts. These are things that people do not see day to day, but think of the costs, the burden and the nonsense—and the arrogance, for that matter—associated with thinking that they can impose an 800-question audit on all of our financial services companies and expect them to welcome this, to be able to do it without incurring some major costs. Of course, these companies are liable before the courts if they unwittingly get something wrong in that 800-question audit.

We have also heard that the Taxation Office has been signalling to many companies and accountants that it will be using its extraordinary investigative powers to sit in and monitor in real time business deals taking place, under the guise of live auditing. If that is so, does the government support such a practice? The fact is that a culture has developed under this government where different organisations—the tax office, ASIC and others—feel that they can now interfere with critical, market sensitive, confidential material and, furthermore, interfere with established corporate governance practices and actually sit at the table when mergers and acquisitions are taking place. This is bizarre, but it is an example of the way in which regulation has gone mad under this government's watch.

The coalition is not just going to talk about reducing red tape and regulation; we are going to do something about it, unlike this government, and we are going to do something substantial. For starters, the Leader of the Opposition has announced that for the first time at a federal level we are going to develop a model to put a value on the cost to business of the regulations that are managed by each federal department. Then we are going to take an axe to red tape to the value of $1 billion a year. Our commitment to this $1 billion a year reduction follows the successful adoption of annual dollar based red tape reduction targets by the Victorian government. Victoria's approach to regulatory reform is highly regarded by business. They topped the Business Council of Australia's scorecard of red tape reform in 2007 and 2010, and the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry is supportive of Victoria's dedicated regulation reduction program. The coalition will recognise the proven success of this deregulation policy and will adapt and refine it. Federal departments will be required to inform a coalition government how many hours small business will spend filling in government paperwork and how much it will cost. This will include things like new software, advice from accountants, training and time spent away from work to learn any new requirements. Departments and bureaucrats will also have to explain how many businesses will be impacted by regulatory changes and how much they will have to do to comply. Any cost provided will need to be examined by the Productivity Commission and it will be transparent and included in departmental annual reports.

So the weight of regulation in each department will be assessed for how much it costs typical businesses in a sector, and it will be extended to identify the costs across a sector. With this information in hand, departments will then be set targets for reducing the costs to business of their regulations and the targets will add up to at least $1 billion per annum. It will be a transparent system that will enable a coalition government to properly assess the ability of departments to reduce the costs of their regulations. I think for the first time many of those in the departments will start to consider the cost implications of their regulations. They are looking to increase and extend the nature of their regulatory operations, but this time they will be forced to see the implications of those regulations.

Today we are here repealing redundant legislation. In that vein we should be repealing the volumes of legislation and regulations introduced to cover up the activities of the National Broadband Network. The NBN marks an ugly new chapter in government intervention. Australia is the only country in the world that is re-nationalising its telecom­munications sector. It is an irony that we are here today repealing redundant and unnecessary legislation when on the same day the government has signed a deal to require Telstra to decommission their fixed copper network to give NBN Co. unfettered, sole access to their pits and ducts and to migrate all of their fixed line customers to the NBN. Telstra will not be able to deliver broadband over their HFC network which currently passes about 2.2 million of Australia's 7.5 million households.

To achieve this deal the government has engaged in extortion and blackmail as part of a relentless and sustained attack on one of Australia's great companies. A government monopoly is being created, with all of its attendant inefficiencies. It is being done through more regulation and by removing the transparency that should apply to even a normal corporation. We should be repealing that redundant legislation today because it is being imposed on the most dynamic and innovative sector in our economy.

Despite this bill and other legislation today being debated in the Main Committee to also improve the efficiency of legislation, we have seen this government snub its nose at good government, at transparency, at the competitive free enterprise culture in Australia and at its responsibility to efficiently manage taxpayers' dollars by holding a gun to the head of one of our major companies in order to deliver a political outcome for a desperate, dysfunctional government. Remember that this was conceived by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on an aircraft travelling from Melbourne to Brisbane. This $50 billion investment was conceived without consulting cabinet and getting its approval. It was conceived by two people who were facing the ignominy of a failed $4.7 billion program that they had promised would solve all the problems of the world. This was a decision made for political advantage and not for the advantage of the Australian taxpayer or the telecommunications sector. This was a pol­itical decision.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order by drawing your attention to standing order 75 relating to irrelevance and tedious repetition. The member for Goldstein is giving the same speech he gave on an unrelated matter in the Main Committee earlier today.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We just saw another example of the embarrassment that is being caused by the government's announcement today. I thank the member for intervening because all he really did was make my case. This is a bill about repealing redundant legislation and the NBN legislation should certainly be in here.

In conclusion, mark my words: we will be back in this chamber at some point in the future to repeal the failed, dangerous and highly wasteful NBN legislation.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to associate myself with the Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) 2011 because it is a very good piece of housekeeping for the statute books. It maintains the very sound practice of this government to eliminate regulation that has become outdated or unnecessary by amending and/or repealing certain legislation, in this case over 30 pieces of legislation. As a former legal practitioner, like the good parliamentary secretary sitting at the table, it was always annoying to be confronted with outdated legislation, especially when giving advice and opinions. The reason we have this legislation before us is that this government responded to the recommendations of the Murray review. The government accepted that it should conduct a housekeeping exercise by repealing standing appropriations that are redundant and that at least annually the Department of Finance and Deregulation should undertake a review of these appropriations and report to the parliament about whether there is a continuing need for the appropriations or the legislation that is relevant to them.

I said that there are over 30 pieces of legislation being amended or repealed in this bill, but I want to highlight a few of them. There is a lovely synergy in some of the pieces of legislation that are being amended or repealed. I particularly point to the AUSSAT Repeal Act 1991, the Snowy Hydro Corporatisation Act 1997 and Telecommunications (Transitional Provis­ions and Consequential Amendments) Act 1997. What links these pieces of legislation? Regarding the first act, AUSSAT was the former government satellite provider. In 1991, under the Hawke Labor government, we began 20 years of very well managed telecommunications liberalisation. We went from a managed duopoly to an oligopoly to what we have today—full competition in telecommunications markets. We started out in discrete areas of services. First we liberalised international services and then long distance. When mobile came into effect we had the duopoly and then we had the entry of other carriers in order to provide competition. The result was that in some areas of our telecommunications sector we did have a very strong regulator and we enabled competition to develop and flourish.

I now turn to the Telecommunications (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act, which in 1997 formed the basis of what became the 1997 reforms, but of course had its genesis yet again in the reformist Hawke-Keating years. They took on the idea that we should not have competition in the telecommunications sector. They actually opened up competition in the form in which we have now, with open carrier licences and carriers and carriage service providers basically being able to operate and compete in every single facet of our telecommunications system.

Finally, there is the Snowy Hydro Corporatisation Act. What links all of these three things? It is a lovely synergy that on this of all days we are looking at this legislation, because we had the ann­ouncement of the deal between the government and Telstra that facilitates the structural separation of Telstra and opens up for the first time broadband services and infrastructure in Australia to proper competition. What does the Snowy Hydro act have to do with it? The NBN is the biggest infrastructure development in Australia since the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

The entry into the definitive agreements and the paving of the way for the structural separation of Telstra achieves something that was not achieved by the Howard government. They attempted to deal with it. I lost count of the number of times we would go to conferences and talk about the sticking points for competition to develop telecommunications and particularly to develop new services such as broadband, and I am sure I heard the member for Bradfield give these exact speeches on this topic on many occasions. On how many occasions were we confronted with the inability of the market to deliver affordable and accessible broadband throughout Australia?

It is a tremendous day today as we have the definitive agreements being entered into with NBN Co. to give them immediate access to Telstra infrastructure—the pits and pipes—to support the rollout of second-release sites on the mainland. Why is this so important? The reason is that it goes to the fundamental 'telco 101' of why we have infrastructure investment and how this leads to competition at the retail level for the benefit of consumers.

As someone who represents an area that is a second-release site on the mainland—and in fact the first Sydney metro rollout will be occurring in Riverstone, in my electorate—this is very welcome news. It means that NBN Co. will be able to use the existing pits, ducts and pipes that are already in place. Having this agreement in place means that we can get on with the job of delivering the NBN with certainty for investors and for NBN Co.

It is interesting to point out that this access to infrastructure is over a minimum 35-year period, reducing duplications and enabling efficient use of existing facilities. Under the agreement Telstra is going to provide much of the infrastructure needed to build the network. As I said in my first speech, it really does establish for the first time 'a national piece of telecommunications utility infrastructure' by enabling the wholesale layer of the network to be ubiquitous and capable of being regulated in a way that ensures all retail service providers have not only equivalent access but also equivalent price irrespective of whether you live in regional or rural or outer metro seats, such as mine. It will mean that competition will flourish, because you effectively 'disinfect' the wholesale layer of the network.

We heard the member for Wentworth talking today, with his same old rhetoric. He has not been able to get a question up on the NBN in question time until today. I have been able to get far more questions up on the NBN and I am just a humble backbencher. The member for Wentworth keeps banging on about how this is a raw deal for Australians and for Telstra and everyone else involved. I think we need to look at the facts. Telstra has entered into this agreement of its own free will and, secondly, we are entering into this and building the NBN because the market has failed. When it came to broadband accessibility and affordability in Australia the market failed and when markets fail we on this side of the House step in and regulate to the extent necessary in order to ensure certain equitable social outcomes. That is what makes us different. We were not so different some time ago. Those opposite once believed in markets, but it seems they do not believe in markets when it comes to some aspects of policy and of law.

I sympathise with the member for Wentworth. He ran a really good dial-up company so he would know a lot about this. Harking back to the consideration in detail on the NBN legislation earlier in the week the member for Wentworth talked about how the issue of access to broadband is about poverty. What would this bloke know about poverty? In 12 years under the Howard government there were 20 or so failed plans and they delivered absolutely nothing. They did not even recognise that the market had failed and yet they have the hide to come in here with no knowledge, by the way. But that does not stop them from having an opinion on something they know nothing about. They have no knowledge at all about what it is like to be representing areas that have suffered for too long from a lack of access to high-speed and ubiquitous broadband, and they have the hide to come in here and say that they oppose the NBN. For so many years they did absolutely nothing and they will stand condemned for it. The coalition should get out into the community a bit, where they are not asking why we are getting the NBN but when we are getting the NBN.

To conclude, I want to talk about one other aspect of some of the laws that are being amended by this statute-book cleanup. They relate to a couple of superannuation acts, some of them a bit more obscure than others, but it does give me an opportunity to talk about superannuation, another area that was defined by the visionary Hawke-Keating government, which identified that superann­uation and our ageing population were going to be a massive issue in years to come. I do want to mention on the issue of superannuation how the coalition went to the last election with a so-called plan for action—just like they had a plan for action on telecommunications, which actually advocated using a copper network. They were so concerned about superannuation, guess how many dot points they could muster up on superannuation—four dot points and less than two pages in their plan for action on a very critical area of public policy. Only last night we heard the shadow Treasurer confirm the coalition's opposition to this government's plan to increase the retirement savings of Australians by lifting the superannuation guarantee rate from nine to 12 per cent. The opposition is simply committed to standing in the way of sensible reform that has received ample support from the Australian population, including the superannuation industry itself. This increase from nine to12 per cent is sound and has the support of key industry groups such as the FSC, the AIST and ASFA. Let us not forget, when those opposite were in government they were obsessed with tinkering with the superannuation system. It is those opposite who riddled the superannuation industry with the superannuation surcharge tax, which was an additional tax on superannuation contributions between August 1996 and July 2005, when they finally bowed to industry pressure to abolish what they had so foolishly introduced. To this day, superannuation providers, retirees and the Taxation Office are still grappling with the disastrous legacy left behind by the superannuation surcharge tax.

This government is committed to the superannuation industry. We are committed to making a positive difference in the retirement savings of Australians, as set out by the Assistant Treasurer in his statement only last night. That is why this government is working with the industry to make the most of the recommendations of the Cooper review and to ensure that we prosecute the case for the superannuation guarantee rate to be lifted from nine to 12 per cent. This legislation is very timely in terms of the beautiful synergy we have today, where everybody else in Australia other than those opposite is happy that the NBN is taking one more step towards being developed on the mainland, and that cannot come soon enough for the residents of Riverstone—the site of the first Sydney metro roll-out site and an area that I represent.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The House is actually debating the Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) 2011, but superannuation and statute and stocktake all start with the same letter so I suppose that is the link. I thank the member for Greenway for her spirited contribution about deregulation and about how red tape will be made so much easier in the telco sector by a government that has used taxpayers' money to wipe out the competitors. And Labor has the hide to say it is interested in markets—have you ever heard such utter nonsense in all of your life? They are so committed to telecommunications, they are going to wipe out all of the competition. That will reduce red tape! No-one will have to worry about considering options or about consumer outcomes—the government will just use taxpayers' money to take out the competitors. That is a very interesting approach to markets, and that perhaps identifies why a cost-benefit analysis on the NBN project has not been done. It would have highlighted that there were so many better ways of going about this project. Like everything else that seems to happen in this place, it is all about Labor playing the political game and putting good public policy way, way, way down the priority list.

The Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) affects 36 acts—it amends 11 acts and repeals 25 others. It repeals 39 redundant special appropriations relating to the Commonwealth's financial framework, including one statutory special account, and 25 redundant acts in their entirety. The bill has no potential impact that we can observe, and certainly the coalition will not oppose it. What we wish, though, is that this housecleaning of statutes actually transforms into a genuine deregulation agenda. It seems there is no problem that this Rudd-Gillard government or Gillard-Rudd government—we will see, in time—thinks cannot be fixed with more regulation. They used to think there was no problem that could not be solved by spending billions of taxpayers' dollars, but those days are gone. We are borrowing $135 million a day to keep the place ticking over, and that throw-money-at-it strategy is certainly putting strains on the fiscal circumstances of the Commonwealth and putting upward pressure on interest rates, making it hard for small businesses to access funds. They cannot spend money like that now, so the option is to regulate the wazoo out of it and that will somehow solve the problem.

Whilst this Statute Stocktake Bill does some housecleaning and removes some legislation that no longer serves any useful purpose, it does not go to what is really required and what I hope the parliament will increasingly turn its focus to, and that is a genuine effort to lift the regulatory burden and make sure we remove pointless and needless and overly prescriptive regulation that serves no positive outcome for the nation and its citizens. It is an enormous drain on the economy. It displaces resources. It has been estimated that each year compliance with regulation costs around $80 billion, so it is not surprising that the broader community, particularly the small business community, is completely disbelieving of Labor claims that they will do something about deregulation.

We have heard that deregulation in telecommunications means using taxpayers' money to wipe out the competitors and to buy out their assets and their customers and then make sure you shut down the hybrid fibre coax network that is already placed to deliver about 100 megahertz to 3,000,000 households. You just buy that out so there is no competition. That is a very interesting form of deregulation.

The objective of this Statute Stocktake Bill is to do some housework. We saw some housework when the Labor government committed to implement BAS Easy to ease the GST compliance burden—a way of completing quarterly BASs in minutes was the claim. Dr Emerson made that claim, amongst many. Labor estimated that its GST plan would apply to about 1.4 million small businesses, with turnover from $50,000 down to around $2 million. However, the housecleaning that was involved with that particular measure was simply to sweep it under the carpet. The government quietly revoked its promise to implement BAS Easy and reneged on its promise to simplify goods and services tax paperwork for small business. It is a pity that initiative was not captured and in the spirit of the bill before the chamber.

There was another commitment made, one which is also not captured in any statutory sense, certainly not in the Statute Stocktake (No. 1) Bill, and that was the promise of one in, one out. Remember that promise? What a great idea that was. I know the Labor Party was quite pleased when it made the promise before the 2007 election that that would be its approach to regulation—one in, one out. Yet the statistics tell a different story. The actual outcomes, the stats provided by the Commonwealth's own ComLaw register, are quite damning and reveal an abysmal performance by the Labor government against its own one in, one out commitment. Between 2008 and 2010, the Common­wealth's own ComLaw register revealed that federal Labor introduced 12,835 new regulations. On the one in, one out basis—and I am prepared to cut the government a bit of slack—even 10,000, 11,000 or 12,000 would have been close to that but, no, there have been 12,835 new regulations and only 58 repealed. To quote Maxwell Smart in Get Smart, 'missed by that much'. What an abysmal performance: 12,835 new regulations in, 58 only repealed. So much for the one in, one out commitment. That rounds out to about 220 new regulations for each one they have removed, way off anything that would be a respectable performance.

Who can forget the Gillard government's desire—in fact, they spruiked about it today—as of 1 July to make small businesses the 'pay clerk' for the Gillard government's paid parental leave scheme? I am all for parents getting paid parental leave. In fact the coalition's policy is very much superior in that regard. What I am not for is the government coming in with its deficient scheme and imposing on small employers the red tape and cost burden of being the pay clerk for the government's own deficient scheme. That is not helping. That is not a cleaning out of excessive red tape. That is adding more burden. That is the kind of measure I would have liked to have seen in this bill. In fact it did not even need to be in this bill—the private member's bill I introduced to achieve that objective was defeated in this chamber by the government and the Independents, and they stand condemned for that insensitivity to the regulatory burden on time- and cash-scarce small businesses.

It goes further. Look at the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten. He is very keen and probably wondering, a year out since the last change of leader, whether maybe he is due. That may be what he is thinking. It is hard to know. When we highlighted the government's plan inspired by secret union meetings to undertake a coordinated attack on independent contractors and self-employed people he said, 'No, I won't do anything; I won't even make life harder for any independent contractors.' That was his promise but again there was another broken promise, as we saw in this budget—not a relieving of regulation but new regulatory burdens being imposed on businesses that engage independent contractors, in addition to the stalking and the terrorising that is going on of independent contractors and self-employed people through the tax office, Fair Work Australia and the Australian Building and Construction Commission, all of whom should have more pressing and high-priority tasks to pursue rather than hound and harass people out of independent contracting.

Who else can remember the Office of Best Practice Regulation and the annual reports which come out each year, only to discover that this government and the host office of the Office of Best Practice Regulation systematically ignore the advice on major decisions which then had significant implications particularly for small businesses and family enterprises. That effort to tidy up the regulatory process, to get some rigour and commitment to best practice regulation, rightsizing regulation—not excessive, punishing regulation that serves no good public policy purpose—could have been in this Statute Stocktake bill(No 1). That would have been worth while but again that is not in the bill either.

Then you wonder what about the minister, Senator Sherry, the Marcel Marceau of the frontbench. You never hear from him. He never speaks up for small business. Instead, he is the prophet of doom for booksellers around Australia at a time they are doing a terrific job in a difficult retail environment made worse by this incompetent government. What does Senator Sherry have to say? He was asked why, when almost half of everyone employed in the private sector is employed in a small business, the Rudd or the Gillard government will not have the small business minister in cabinet, to keep an eye on regulatory overreach and disproportionate burden being imposed on small businesses and family enterprises. He is responsible—and I quote with some 'clarity':

Whether or not I'm in cabinet, frankly, hmmm, I don't think is a great deal of help to small business.

As a minister ever been damned so comprehensively by his own words? He is not sure he can make a difference. He is certainly not making one now. He seems to imply that even if he were in Cabinet he still would not make a contribution. This in part explains why 300,000 jobs have been lost from small business since the election of the Labor government.

So who is on the beat checking out the regulatory burdens that are being imposed? Who is feeding into what I hoped would have been a much more substantial bill which really looked at deregulation systematically and more seriously? Thank goodness the coalition is focusing on that. The question of genuine concern confronting time-poor small businesses is: who is doing that work? Our commitment is that the coalition will do that work. Small businesses are time poor; they are increasingly tied up in red tape which reflects the sense that federal Labor has talked a good game but simply not delivered when it comes to red tape reduction.

Small business rightly recognises that time and effort spent on red tape comes at a cost. It is in the coalition's DNA to help small business get ahead and to help small businesses who have been forgotten by Labor and are suffering in a patchwork economy that, for small business, is threadbare. The coalition is determined to ensure that the government makes it easier and not harder for small business to prosper and grow. Excess red tape and regulation benefits no-one. It only means more costs for businesses, stops new jobs, stifles investment, obstructs innovation, impedes productivity and ultimately reduces the standard of living and opportunities available to Australians. The amount of regulation being imposed sees small businesses not waving goodbye to regulation but drowning under the weight of it as they are in a difficult economic climate being made worse by this incompetent government. Consol­idation of new regulations into one instrument can be little more than window dressing where one does not properly evaluate the cost and effort of complying with the regulatory obligations. Fewer words do not necessarily amount to reduced red-tape burdens and compliance costs. In fact, that might require small businesses to go out and get advice and interpretation. There might be fewer words and fewer passages but the burden, the cost and the impost may be much greater than if clearly articulated, right-sized, small business sensitive regulation had been developed in the first instance. Poor quality efforts at 'harmonisation' may be a bonus for big corp­orations operating in multiple jurisdictions while disadvantaging small business operators located in a single state where specific and familiar requirements are replaced with new and inappropriate 'one size fits all' rules. Small business costs and compliance impacts are clearly not a priority for this Labor government.

My friend and colleague the member for Goldstein, Mr Robb, has outlined a comprehensive coalition commitment to reduce red tape, the cost and the weight of the regulatory impost and to actually hold ministers and departments accountable for these outcomes. A coalition government would reduce the burden of red tape by at least $1 billion every year. It would do that by making bureaucrats tell us how many hours small businesses are spending filling out government paperwork and how much this costs. It would include things like what new software is required, advice from accountants, training and time spent, the actual cost, and effort required in meeting the compliance obligation being imposed upon them. This would involve obliging departments and bureaucrats to explain how many businesses will be impacted and what they will actually have to do to comply and then getting proper metrics from the Productivity Commission about what all this effort actually amounts to and reporting outcomes in departmental reports. It is about adopting a principle of minimum effective regulation for proposals to amend or extend compliance burdens to small business once being satisfied that the best and most effective and most justified public policy response is a regulatory one rather than other public policy options. It is about being fair dinkum about one in, one out.

These are issues I would have liked to have seen in this Statute Stocktake Bill—a comprehensive, fair dinkum commitment to actually deliver red-tape reductions. We have a real target and a practical action plan to achieve the removal of at least $1 billion in red-tape costs each and every year. Coalition ministers and their departments will have to meet targets and they will be held to account. We understand that for small business men and women less paperwork means a chance to earn better profits, boost sales, create opportunities for their community and, critically, spend more time with their families—because small business people are people too. (Time expired)

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all those who have contributed to the debate on the Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) 2011 and, in particular, on the matter of the National Broadband Network, that having been raised by the member for Goldstein. I thank the member for Greenway for her excellent contribution on the announcement of the National Broadband Network deal today. It is, of course, a network that is going to confer lasting benefits on all of the people of Australia.

The Statute Stocktake Bill (No. 1) 2011 seeks to reduce red tape by amending legislation across a range of portfolios to repeal redundant special appropriations and a statutory special account. This is consistent with the government's response to the report Operation Sunlight: Overhauling Budgetary Transparency. The bill, if passed, would abolish 39 special appropriations, including a statutory special account, by repealing redundant provisions in 11 acts and repealing 25 acts in their entirety. This reflects the government's commitment to enhance transparency and accountability in the Commonwealth's financial framework.

Finally, I would like to particularly acknowledge the efforts of those officials, from across the Commonwealth, who assisted in preparing this bill. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.