John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline the importance of freeing business and reducing regulation, and how will red tape repeal day help the constituents of Bennelong?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bennelong for his question and recognise his previous experience as a senior business person and as a leading global athlete.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was; he was fantastic. He, like many others, recognises how important it is to free the shackles from business and enterprise, remove regulation, reduce the burden of red and green tape and get rid of taxes. As the Prime Minister said a little bit earlier—it is graphic but it is real—today, we have a bonfire of regulation. Fifty thousand pages from the statute books are being brought to an end—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Moreton.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

along with 9½ thousand regulations and 1,000 redundant acts of parliament. That is a huge amount. It is a massive burden on business, and the best way to help business is to lift that burden. The best way to help the economy is to free it up to give people the chance to get on with their lives without Canberra telling them how they should behave and what they should do.

Of course, there is a financial benefit as well. It has already been identified that the FOFA reforms alone will benefit the Australian economy by over $700 million. There is a $90 million one-off implementation save, and $190 million will be saved every year. Those savings alone help to make it easier for business to do its business and simplify the process for consumers.

The member for McMahon said that this is all a stunt. Getting rid of regulation, according to the Labor Party, is a stunt; it is meaningless. That is because the Labor Party is the best friend of regulation. The Labor Party is the best friend of control over business. The fact is that the Labor Party not only introduced 22,000 new regulations in just five years but they also left behind a burden of 92 announced but never legislated taxation initiatives, which added to the complexity of the taxation system for business. So I say to the Labor Party: do not do the damage in opposition that you did in government; get out of the way and help us to get rid of bad regulation.