Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've spoken at some length already about why the Greens don't want to see, in the Statute Update (Smaller Government) Bill 2017 before us, the Product Stewardship Advisory Group disbanded. To save a few bucks, are we going to rip out of this legislation the body that is overseeing probably one of the most important recycling initiatives that we've seen in this country? It is probably one of the only things that we've done to take a holistic approach to fixing the waste problem that we have in this country.

Now, I haven't had a chance to talk about CAMAC yet and why we don't want to see CAMAC disbanded and defunded either. It has done some critical work on financial managed investment schemes, which you yourself, Mr Acting Deputy President Ketter, have been involved with through the economics committee. In fact, it has been one of the only organisations to independently research the catastrophe that was forestry managed investment schemes. We need that kind of independent research and oversight in our policy, and it's very important for us to take our cues from that kind of independent research when we debate these topics in parliament. Mr Acting Deputy President, could I take a point of order while I'm speaking, if that's okay?

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you have a point of order, Senator Whish-Wilson?

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm quite happy to speak for 18 minutes and 35 seconds on this because it is a topic near and dear to my heart. But I understand I only had six minutes on the clock. I just wanted to check that.

Senator Ruston interjecting—

Senator Ruston, I'm very happy to get away with it!

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much for that, Senator Whish-Wilson. We will reset the clock so that you have six minutes remaining.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I probably shouldn't have said anything, should I! I could have got away with that! Another point of order: will you include in the transcript what I've already said?

Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that's correct.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. Now is not the time to disband the Product Stewardship Advisory Group. If you go back and have a look at the Product Stewardship Act 2011 and ask yourself what it has achieved in this country, I'm sad to report it has achieved very little. There have been some schemes, like e-waste, which I have already talked about in this speech, that have worked very well. There are others that have been totally unsatisfactory, such as for tyres. However, when we look at schemes that haven't even got off the ground yet, like container deposit schemes, we have seen a state-based approach. The Senate has done fantastic work recommending that the federal government step in and take a nationally coordinated approach to collecting cans and bottles. We know plastic bottles make up nearly half of the plastic we find on our beaches and in our oceans—it is an absolute killer of marine life. It is a toxic tide of plastic that's choking our oceans. It is coming from our waste, and we don't have a holistic way to manage that in this country.

We'll have bans, hopefully nationally, on plastic bags and microbeads. Who's actually got a plan for targeting the reduction of plastic that we use in this country? That's what product stewardship schemes do. They include the producers of these waste products, all levels of government and the consumer. I've got to say that this is very disappointing, given that we saw the UK Prime Minister come out over Christmas and declare her own war on waste—it was editorialised in the Agethat goes beyond plastic bags. It is a reminder for this country that we need a holistic approach to waste management. The UK has declared their war on waste. They've set a target for the reduction in the use of plastics by 2025, and they already have some bold ambitions in other areas.

We saw Indonesia, also over the Christmas break, talk about their war on waste and their targets. This is something that's been discussed at the World Economic Forum and at the United Nations. The scourge of plastic pollution and other marine debris in our ocean is one of the biggest global pollution threats we face. It is absolutely choking our ocean and turning it into a plastic soup. We're finding microplastics in plankton in the Antarctic. It is that pervasive, and we're doing nothing about it. Product stewardship schemes are critical to taking a national coordinated approach. It would be nice to see some federal leadership on these issues from this current government, because they have been missing in action on the war on waste.

Let's talk about Victoria. I was down there recently with the Senate, chairing the committee that's looking at how we can have better waste recycling in this country across the board. Victoria is on the verge of a crisis. I use that word very carefully. The Age has also been writing numerous stories about the problems in Victoria. Since China said that its going to stop accepting our waste recycling products—nearly 30 per cent of our plastics go to China—we've suddenly got a situation in this country where we don't know what to do with it. Are we going to landfill it, or are we going to use the funds from the levies that were set up to be reinvested in this industry in order to find solutions to not just recycle but use other products instead of plastic? We've got a situation now where some of our key recyclers are not committing to taking on any more kerbside recycling products in Victoria. What do we do then? Who's got a plan for this? Where's our holistic approach to waste reduction?

We've seen illegal dumping in New South Wales. Four Corners showed an expose on the corruption that was involved in that and all the dodgy goings on, which the committee is also looking at. We have no national plan. We barely even have a state based plan for solving waste in this country. Thank God the ABC is running their war on waste and making this a public issue. It's doing a really good job in getting the public behind it and wanting to see a plan and wanting to see their parliament and politicians taking this situation seriously.

Senator Urquhart, who is in the chamber today, was on—and I think she may have chaired—the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee when it did it's fantastic work of looking at how the federal government needs to do a lot more to tackle the issue of the toxic tide of waste, especially waste that's making its way into our ocean, polluting our waterways and turning our oceans into a plastic soup. We have to start somewhere. It has to be simple. There needs to be leadership and there needs to be a scheme.

The product stewardship schemes that we're abolishing in this legislation are absolutely critical. No matter what kind of waste stream you are looking at, the advisory groups play a critical function. They've been underused. They've been ignored. Saying they haven't been funded and they're not working is not an excuse for getting rid of them today. What we should be doing is increasing funding to them, getting them active and getting a plan for reducing waste in this country that we can all get behind and that actually works. We should stop talking about it and actually get on and do it.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish the best of 2018 to all our colleagues here and welcome back. I'm very happy to be making my first contribution to the Senate for 2018 on this particular topic, which is deregulation. I mean, I would say how sweet that smell—we've been starved of it since the successful repeal days of bygone years. I have to say that the title of this bill is particularly attractive to Australian Conservatives, because smaller government is actually one of our core pillars. It's a pillar that we wish every other party would grasp hold of and uphold, because they both seem to have jettisoned it in the way of political expediency.

While this bill does in places deregulate, it is worth contrasting it with past behaviour and, in particular, with the behaviour of significant others. There's no more significant other in the deregulation space currently than US President Donald Trump. President Trump in just his first year has led the US Republican Party to succeed in repealing or delaying 1,500 regulations and implementing a policy that sees his government cutting 22 regulations for every one enacted. That has kickstarted confidence in the US economy. It has kickstarted investment in the US economy, and he's living up to his motto, which is to make America great again. Why can't we make Australia even better by deregulating, repealing and cutting taxes? That's a question for those who are ruling the Treasury benches and the opposition who seem opposed to making Australia an even better place to be.

But let's reflect on the better days, the repeal days. Two years ago, on 4 February, 2016, the Turnbull government had their mission accomplished moment on red tape. They scrapped the twice annual red tape repeal days even though, when elected, the coalition had promised to repeal $1 billion a year in red tape. The Turnbull government declared mission accomplished; nothing more to do here. Of course, the first significant repeal day—an unofficial one, which was easily missed—came with the election of the Abbott government. It was the abolition of the carbon and mining taxes, and I was a very proud supporter of getting rid of those taxes.

When you now go to the website address cuttingredtape.gov.au, the modesty of their aspirations and goals today is apparent. It's a very modest page. Its focus apparently is on saving taxpayer money. I would suggest it's a very modest page because not much is actually happening. This page lists four repeal days as its claim to fame, and they were in the autumns and springs of 2015 and 2016. The last report, entitled 2015 Annual red tape reduction report,on that website indicates red tape reduction decisions had totalled $4.8 billion in red tape to be axed as of 31 December 2015. Clearly, the deregulation agenda, the cutting of red tape, the cutting of green tape, the cutting of costs and limiting of the size of our government has disappeared—mission accomplished. We're only absenting ourselves in Prime Minister Turnbull and his Air Force jumpsuit and an aircraft carrier for him to claim it.

There's been zero progress on this, because the page has clearly been orphaned under the Turnbull administration. I'm not even going to say it's been archived, because it's still live, so someone is still paying for it to be up there; there's just nothing happening—more waste of taxpayers' money. The government said in their report of 2015 that it had overachieved on red tape repeal and would—and I will paraphrase a little here—now go a little more under the radar, have a little more innovation in its red tape repeal. I would suggest it's so stealthlike, so under the radar, that you cannot even see it happening.

When it comes to red tape, I want to credit the extensive work of that fine institution, the Institute of Public Affairs, on this topic. Their latest report, entitled Barriers to prosperity: red tape and the regulatory state in Australia, includes chart 8, which gets worse every single year it's published. It's about the number of pages of Commonwealth legislation. From Federation through to about 1956, this place passed no more than 1,000 pages of federal legislation every year. It started rising rapidly, to a rate of about 3,000 pages a year by 1986. In 30 years, it had tripled. Since then, it has really taken off. It reached 8,000 pages of legislation passed annually at the height of Labor's frenzy for red tape in 2012, and it fell to a more sane but still extraordinarily debilitating 4,000 in the last reporting year. It's still far, far too high.

I simply don't buy what the government's peddling when it says, 'Mission accomplished on repeal days and getting rid of red tape'. There is much more to be done. If our economy is to become more successful, more competitive and more attractive to investment, and if we are to stimulate Australia's prosperity, we need to look across the Pacific and see what can be achieved where the will is in place to do it. The Trump administration is delivering what it promised, and the proof is in the pudding when you look at the economic growth and the jobs growth in America and the investment that is going on there. Meanwhile, this government is fiddling as our economy burns.

Around the time of the National Commission of Audit, the Institute of Public Affairs found our economy would be $176 billion, or 11 per cent of GDP, larger per annum if red tape repeal were taken seriously. What more incentive do you need? When you consider that, at that time, income tax revenue was around $10 billion less per annum than it is today, you realise that red tape repeal must remain a constant focus for whomever is in government.

The National Commission of Audit identified 99 of 194 Commonwealth primary bodies that should be abolished, merged, privatised or consolidated. I accept that some progress has been made on this front, but there is so much more that can and should be done. This would save millions upon millions of dollars for the Australian taxpayer and free up the government to focus on what it should be doing rather than all the extraneous things that it does to satisfy the whims and demands of very small groups of people. The National Commission of Audit also noted that a further 700 bodies—boards, committees and councils—ought to be rationalised. I wonder what has happened to that. The Commission of Audit never really saw the light of day. It's been abandoned, just as red tape repeal days seem to have been abandoned. I wonder if the government is just claiming 'mission accomplished' on that too.

I'd like to reflect also on the ASADA Advisory Group, which we're dealing specifically with here. Schedule 4 abolishes the ASADA Advisory Group because it's not active and has no current members. That's a pretty good reason to abolish it, so we're not going to argue about that. We support that. But I want to reflect on the history of this group and particularly on drugs in sport. I have a particular interest in the sporting arena. I was on the board of the Australian Sports Commission. I thought it did some excellent work. Stamping out performance-enhancing drugs and drug abuse in sport is really critical.

Back in 2010, the ASADA Advisory Group was formed. It was announced in May 2012 that former sports minister and Home and Away star Mark Arbib would announce appointments to the committee, which had already met twice during the financial year. There was an accomplished list of people on it: Mr Brian Ward, OAM, who would chair the advisory committee; Ms Kate Palmer; Mr John Drury; Professor David Handelsman; Ms Anne Gripper; and Mr Steve Moneghetti. These are very notable and exceptional people, all of whom have achieved a great deal and were appointed to an advisory board in good faith by a government minister, who I'm convinced was doing the right thing. In its inaugural year, the committee had costs of about $15,900, including fees paid to its members—very modest. By its concluding year, it incurred just $1,100 in costs in the final reporting year.

So it hasn't cost a great deal of money, but it's cost Australians and the Labor government in particular a great deal of credibility, to be frank. Remember: this committee was the one that was used by the Gillard Labor government to justify the 'blackest day in the history of Australian sport'. That was one of the blackest days in the misuse of sporting legends by a government desperate to distract attention from the lacklustre—and that's being very generous—performance of its leader. That was the day, you may recall, when ALP ministers Lundy and Clare declared that organised crime was behind the increased use of performance-enhancing drugs in Australian sport and was seeking to infiltrate our beloved national pastimes.

Many people have come to the conclusion that this blackest day, as it was described by former head of ASADA, Richard Ings, was nothing more than to a stunt to steer attention away from flailing leadership of Ms Julia Gillard, who was in the dying months of her prime ministership at that stage as the faceless apparatchiks within the Labor Party—including Mr Bill Shorten, I have to say—were plotting to knife her in the back and reinstate the person they all said they hated: Mr Kevin Rudd. There were people who had integrity and refused to be part of a second coup to counter the earlier coup, but in the end these same people are at work today plotting now against Mr Shorten.

Mr Shorten has been exposed as a hollow man. We know that Mr Shorten is vacuous and empty, and that's why he makes a lot of noise, but we also know that Mr Albanese is much more popular than Mr Shorten. He probably has less confidence in himself than Mr Shorten. I'm not sure whether or not that is justified. We also know that amongst the ALP rank and file Mr Albanese has the numbers but it's the faceless powerbrokers of Labor who are desperate to prop up Mr Shorten, because that will prop up their own interests. So will we see another quasi attempt to divert the people from the failures of Mr Shorten, say, 'There's nothing to see over here,' and in the same moment seek to besmirch another one of our great contributors to our national psyche: the sporting codes in this country. We don't want to see another blackest day in Australian sport—that claim, that falsehood just for political expediency. But I digress.

The ASADA Advisory Group's closure was announced on 15 December 2014 and yet, extraordinarily, here we are, three years later and now abolishing it. So we've closed it, it sat there on the statute books and the government is claiming this is the smaller government bill of 2017. It is much ado about nothing. We're saving 1,100 bucks and we're closing the book on a very unsavoury chapter, and that's the extent of smaller government for 2017 for this government. What a shameful indictment. There are so many things we could be ripping into to save the taxpayers billions of dollars. The government could live within its means rather than mortgaging the future of our children, rather than intergenerational theft, spending cash, borrowing money today and expecting our children to repay it with not much to show for it.

Shamefully, I think the government has given up the ghost in this space, as many on the government benches will attest to. But I think the reason they have had to throw in the towel is that, when you look across the crossbench here and look at the Labor Party, you see there is no will whatsoever, with one or two exceptions who have been consistent on the record—and I will credit Senator Leyonhjelm here at the risk of condemning his status with my praise. But at the very least he's been consistently standing up and saying government is too big and it costs too much money. We've had others on the crossbench here who say they're conservatives but who are prepared to throw an extra $5 billion into education with no measurable outcomes. They say that's a good result. That's not. Be accountable. Have targets and know what the money is going to be spent on. Then you can make an accurate assessment of it. As it is now, you just take a pot of money to the education department and say, 'Spend it how you like, and we'll see.' That hasn't worked in the past; it's not going to work now. It won't work until you say, 'You've got to deliver increased literacy and numeracy for our children.' Then you can maybe justify spending a bit of extra money—when the outcomes are known, the expectations are known and the performance is known.

Here we have a circumstance where the government is flailing around for stuff to introduce on the first day. It wants to claim the mantle of smaller government, even though we know it's not true. I see the wry smiles on the faces of some government members. I will not name them, because I know they're embarrassed by the lack of performance on this. I merely say that the IPA is a great training ground for ideological warriors, for those who truly believe and understand the need to reduce the role of government. When you cross that Rubicon, if I may, from the 'People's Republic of Victoria' into the 'People's Republic of the ACT' something happens. It's like a closed shop. I left that shop because I think the door needs to be open for a better deal for Australian taxpayers. I would say to everyone: if you believe, like I believe, that deregulation is important, that cutting the cost of government is important, that giving taxpayers a fair go is important, and that governments living within their means, just like we expect every family and every household to do, is important, then the Australian Conservatives is the party for you. My door is always open to you, James. Sorry, my door is always open to anyone that's committed to that sort of agenda, because, honestly, that's what our country needs.

We cannot continue this frenzied love affair, if I can put it like that, that Labor, the Greens and, unfortunately, too many within the coalition government have with micromanaging everybody's lives, with installing regulations, red tape and blue tape and green tape—whatever sort of tape you want to use—that inhibits or impinges on the ability of every individual and every business in this country to do their absolute best. It hasn't worked in the past. It's not going to work in the future.

So, however modest the claim for the Statute Update (Smaller Government) Bill 2017 is, it allows us to highlight the fact that the process of deregulation is far from mission accomplished. There are billions more dollars that could be saved on behalf of the Australian people that would enable them to get on with their lives as well as they possibly can; deliver the best possible outcomes for their employees and their businesses; generate more tax revenue for the government, ultimately; and stop this money shuffle which is crippling our economy.

The merit of this initiative is good. It is lip service to a much bigger and broader problem, and I can only hope it will be a catalyst for the government to actually get their act together in this space rather than pretend they've achieved everything they need to.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the government's Statute Update (Smaller Government) Bill 2017. It's a bill with lots of potential, if you judge it by its name. But once again, I lament the fact that the government is not going far enough. Amongst other things, the bill abolishes the group that advises ASADA, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. Of course it's good we're abolishing ASADA's advisory group but we should abolish ASADA too.

In the late 1980s, some people came to see Ros Kelly, the sports minister at the time, to say something should be done about steroid use in sport. Ros Kelly should have told these people that sporting codes are perfectly capable of banning their players from using performance-enhancing substances. Instead, she created the Australian Sports Drug Agency, which has now become ASADA. ASADA is a government agency that tells players in various sporting codes not to use various substances from caffeine to peptides, many of which are perfectly legal. ASADA tests the players and if they find that the players used the various substances, they tell the sporting codes that the players can't play anymore. I emphasise we are talking about legal substances here, not illicit drugs. Taxpayers pay more than $12 million a year for ASADA to do this. There is absolutely no justification for it.

Sporting codes are owned and managed by private organisations. If they think that their players should not take various legal substances, they can make a rule for their sport. No-one wants to maintain the integrity and popularity of a sport more than the sporting codes themselves. Of course if the sporting codes can get the taxpayers to pay for the drug testing of their players then they will take the freebie, but that is no reason to offer the freebie. If any employer comes running to the government and says, 'Can you please test my staff to see if they take legal drugs,' a government that is looking after taxpayers should tell that employer to get lost.

What ASADA does cannot be justified on health grounds either. There is no public health case for stopping a tiny percentage of people, mostly elite athletes, from taking caffeine and peptides while letting them punch each other in boxing, torture themselves in triathlons or attack each other's hamstrings in rugby league. It is none of the government's business. Abolish ASADA and give everyday Australians a tax cut.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Science, Jobs and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to thank those senators who have contributed to this debate. The bill, if enacted, would repeal three acts and amend 10 acts across the Commonwealth to support the implementation of the government's smaller-government agenda. The bill follows on from a series of government decisions, announced in earlier tranches of the smaller-government agenda, relating to the abolition of a number of bodies. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that consideration of this bill in Committee of the Whole be made an order of the day for a later hour.