James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset, may I extend my welcome to colleagues at the beginning of a new parliamentary year. I have a confession to make. I wish that it was every day that I had the opportunity to rise in this place to speak on a bill entitled Statute Update (Smaller Government) Bill 2017. That would be a great thing. But today is a good day because it is one rare day that I get to speak on a bill that is so well titled and so well motivated in its intentions.

This is a bill we started debating late last year, before we broke for Christmas. I remember sitting in the chamber listening to the speech on this bill that Senator Whish-Wilson concluded earlier today. I reflected very carefully over the Christmas break on that speech and its many and varied aspects, and I will respond to some of them. Senator Whish-Wilson focused particularly on one of the advisory bodies that is going to be abolished by this bill and his concern that it would lead to problems for the Australian environment. Senator Whish-Wilson spoke about the many and varied forms of waste that concern him, including, if my memory serves me correctly, e-waste, plastic waste, food waste and probably other forms of waste. But, in listening very carefully to Senator Whish-Wilson's contribution last year and his continuation today, I did not hear him mention one form of waste. It is a form of waste that I think that we as parliamentarians, as stewards of the Australian people's money, should be very careful about. That is, of course, the waste of taxpayers' money. That is what this bill seeks to address and does address. The truth is that much of the money which taxpayers work hard to earn and pay to the federal government is not always as well spent as it could be. Any opportunity we have to make sure that money is spent better—and, if there's any left over, it is returned to the people it comes from in the first place through lower taxes—is something we should all strive to do. The waste of taxpayers' money is the greatest waste in this country and is something that we should all be mindful of.

Senator Bernardi certainly knows the way to my heart by very kindly and extensively quoting from the great work of the Institute of Public Affairs—which, as senators know, is a former employer of mine—in particular, their work in recent years on red tape, which is a vital issue facing the nation. As the IPA has demonstrated and as Senator Bernardi quoted, red tape costs the Australian economy $176 billion a year and our GDP would be about 11 per cent higher if there were no red tape barriers to economic growth. Senator Bernardi is right in one very important respect: the task of reducing red tape is never over; the task of combatting red tape will never end. As long as there is a parliament, a bureaucracy and legislators, there will be a need to combat the rising tide of red tape. Senator Bernardi is being a little bit unfair, though, to the record of this government on red tape. I particularly note his reference to the IPA's annual research on the pages of legislation passed by the parliament. It's a piece of research which I had some involvement with in my time at the IPA. It is a very good measure of red tape. It's a measure which reflects more favourably on this coalition government than on the Labor government that preceded it, as I think Senator Bernardi was able to acknowledge. We have passed far fewer pages of new legislation than previous governments and we have done more to repeal legislation than previous governments. But it is, of course, a lament of all modern governments that so much regulation and legislation is required to be passed.

There is so much demand in the community for us to act on issues of concern, and often the first call when addressing a problem in society is a call to government asking us to regulate. I think that is a flawed approach and that, whenever possible, we should decline to do so. One of the things this government and other governments attempting to reduce red tape have discovered is that it's much more difficult to remove red tape than it is to put it there in the first place. Every time a new law is passed and a new regulation is put in place, a constituency rises up to defend it. Even some of what I would characterise as the more modest measures in this bill, which really should be uncontroversial, are attracting some opposition. I politely suggest that most Australians haven't heard of the Oil Stewardship Advisory Council or, indeed, the Development Allowance Authority, yet there will be objections from some that these bodies will no longer exist. I respectfully suggest that, if these bodies were abolished, the only people who would notice tomorrow, as opposed to today, that they weren't there any more would be anyone who was serving on them or being paid by them; not anyone else in the wider community.

One of my pleasures in this parliament is to serve on the Red Tape Committee, chaired by Senator David Leyonhjelm, who's speaking next in this debate. It has confronted many interesting issues on red tape and regulation. Sector by sector, we've looked at regulation in all sorts of different areas, from alcohol taxation to regulation in the health industry and health services, about which there is a hearing this Friday. As interesting as each of those sessions has been into individual industries and sectors, we've learnt about the perhaps unintended consequences and inefficient barriers that red tape causes for them in their industry, preventing them from employing more people, providing better services to their consumers or, indeed, providing better returns to their shareholders. What's more interesting are the holistic findings that will come out of this inquiry process.

Hopefully we can make holistic recommendations at the end of the process because I think we're confronting two truths. One is that, in the modern world, the declining trust in institutions, particularly the declining trust in companies, has led consumers and voters to demand a higher level of regulation of those companies. Whereas once they may have been willing to trust their bank manager because they knew him from walking down the street and had a good personal relationship with him, now they think of a bank as an impersonal institution far away from what they do in their lives and not relating to them. They demand from us much greater regulation and much greater oversight over the activities of banks, which they no longer trust to do what they once would have done. That's why in areas of food safety, environment and a whole lot of other areas there is a greater demand for the regulation of businesses. That has very severe impacts, as the IPA has documented very well. Countering that phenomenon is going to be a very broad issue for us to solve. It is not going to be solved simply by walking in here and repealing any one act or bill, or by trimming back any existing regulation; it is a much broader societal issue for us to confront.

The second issue is the one I referred to earlier, which is that constituencies arise around red tape and regulation, and those who benefit from it seek to defend it when governments seek to remove it. So, in their efforts to repeal red tape the government has encountered, amazingly, some businesses—and certainly many public servants, unions and others—that get really attached to regulation once it's in place and fight very hard to ensure it is not removed. They are utterly convinced that their very existence would not continue without that law or regulation in place. This lesson, very importantly, teaches us that we should be even more careful before we put a piece of regulation in place, because once we put it in place, by and large, it's going to stay there. It's going to be very difficult to remove. So I think we need to look at mechanisms to ensure that the build-up of red tape and regulation doesn't happen in the first place, as much as it is important for us to look at repealing regulation that is already there.

I want to outline some of the key aspects of the bill. Of course, it is part of the government's smaller government agenda. It follows decisions the government has made, and that have been announced previously, to abolish a number of bodies. It will cease or abolish seven government bodies, and there are two in particular that I want to single out for consideration by the Senate in demonstration of why this bill is necessary. The first is the Central Trades Committee. This sounds like something from another era, and, indeed, it is. It sounds like something that perhaps Senator Rhiannon would have served on in her time in the Soviet Union. It is a bizarre anachronism that these sorts of bodies arise. In this case, it was a result of an act from 1946 to recognise the trade skills gained by Australians in World War II. It has jurisdiction for a whole range of industries, including blacksmithing. I must confess—and I will no doubt get some angry emails from the many blacksmiths out there—that I didn't think blacksmithing was a big employer in modern, 21st century Australia that needed special regulation by a special committee of the federal government. But there are some who would argue that indeed it is, and that abolishing this will have a terrible impact on the thousands of people, no doubt, who are employed as blacksmiths. I know our former colleague here, Senator Madigan, was a blacksmith, but I seem to remember it was notable that there were hardly any blacksmiths left at all, him included. I think that if the Central Trades Committee is abolished the nation will go on and people will rise out of their beds in the morning and go to work as blacksmiths, boilermakers and sheet metal operators, or in the boot trades. Again, blacksmithing is probably not a really big employer in modern 21st century Australia, even without this very important committee.

The other committee is the Plant Breeder's Rights Advisory Committee. Again, I would hate to earn the wrath of plant breeders out there in Australia, but I have such great faith in their own ability to advocate for themselves that I don't think we need a special federal government committee established to do it.

This brings me to a wider point about advisory committees and advocacy to government. There certainly is a role for advisory committees in some specialist areas, but, wherever possible, we should rely on civil society to advocate for itself. We shouldn't have government appointing advocates for civil society on behalf of civil society. We certainly shouldn't be employing them or putting them on committees because that fundamentally undermines their core responsibility, which is to advocate for their own constituency. It is not our job to employ people to be advocates on behalf of their own sector or their own industry. There are an infinite number of very good NGOs, charities and peak bodies here in Canberra and elsewhere in Australia that are very articulate advocates for their industry or their area or interest. They are very effective in making their case to government when need be, and the process of us appointing them to our bodies doesn't assist them in that. I would much rather see them do that on their own.

Finally, I would like to turn to some objections that have been raised by Labor senators in this debate, particularly about the Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee. It is worth noting that the financial services industry is one of Australia's strongest industry sectors, and really is not in need of sponsorship from taxpayers. I wouldn't have thought that Labor senators would agree that we need to pay the financial services industry to lobby the government; I didn't think that they were in favour of subsidies to big banks and other financial institutions, but perhaps I have a misapprehension there which will be corrected further in this debate.

The financial services industry is obviously very professional, very influential and very capable of putting its views to government, and there are dozens of private organisations that do this; it doesn't need a government committee to do so. Obviously, it faces a diversity of issues, and the different views among stakeholders are needed for policy put to government. One single panel cannot ever hope to capture all that diversity and all those different points of view based on where they come from. Since it was abolished, we have received very rich input from the finance industry, including on reforms related to managed investment schemes, crowd sourced equity funding, external dispute resolution, mutuals' properties and member firms. There are a lot of exciting things in this space—open banking, just to mention one.

I mentioned Senator Whish-Wilson's objections to the abolition of the Product Steward Advisory Group. Originally, this body had a role in the early stages of a new legislative scheme but, given the act is now well established, with years of operation, it is not necessary to have the committee continue. The Department of the Environment and Energy now engages with industry experts on an as-needs basis to gather advice on the classes of products to be considered for some form of accreditation and regulation. This is obviously a far more flexible and effective way to engage with industry, to get the right people at the right time at the least cost to taxpayers, unlike a standing body that has an inflexible composition and fixed overheads regardless of the need of the government to consult it and seek its advice. This more efficient approach to consultations means that we can get much more diverse input to our decision making from people who are highly engaged and effective because they are from the appropriate industry or science fields. It is not as though we are no longer seeking consultation or seeking advice; we are doing it in different ways. Not everything requires an ongoing standing committee. The 2016-17 product list, for example, was compiled under this kind of consultation. It includes products such as end-of-life batteries, photovoltaic systems, plastic oil containers and microbeads—which I know is an issue very close to the heart of Senator Whish-Wilson, being a surfer.

This bill, if it were enacted, would repeal three acts and amend 10 acts across the Commonwealth to support the implementation of the government's smaller government agenda. It is the core business of what governments do, to focus on the really important things and to do away with some of the more peripheral things that we do that aren't as important and that aren't as vital. We should only be doing here what no-one else can do. If it can be done by civil society, by private enterprise or by volunteers then we should not be replicating it here. We should not be crowding out individual citizens who seek to do that on their own and we should seek any opportunity to reduce our expenditure and our waste so that we can do the very moral thing, which is to return to people the money they have earned themselves. It is profoundly wrong for us to take more from taxpayers—any more than we absolutely need—to do the things only we can do and spend it in an unwise and undisciplined way. That's why I commend this bill to the Senate.