Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a pleasure it is to follow on from that contribution from Senator Rennick—very wide ranging as it was. I want to go to a much more mundane matter. During my capacity as deputy chair of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, six bills have been referred to that committee for report and action by the parliament. I think this would be very instructive. It's been nearly six months since the government was elected. Probably about 30 per cent of legislation in the parliament goes through the economics committee, and appropriately so.

The quality of that legislation is interesting. Let's take the first piece of legislation—the Treasury Laws Amendment (Putting Members' Interests First) Bill 2019. It sounds as though the government's on the right track and is trying to do the right thing by people with superannuation. However, the report of that committee found that the most frequently raised concern by inquiry participants related to the 1 October implementation. Many submitters stated that the date was unworkable and unachievable given the information system changes required and the need to contact many thousands of members. This was consistent with concerns raised during the prior inquiry, so it's not a new issue. The old bill lapsed, it came back in the new parliament and it didn't fix the old issues. A large number of submitters argued that members in high-risk occupations should be exempted from the opt-in arrangements. That wasn't agreed, so now we have a situation in which people thought they were covered in the last year and, if they're unfortunate enough to be injured or killed this year, they simply won't be covered.

The matter of premium increases resulting from the proposed changes to default group insurance arrangements was also raised as a common concern. If you take a whole lot of people out of a group life insurance policy, you simply increase the premiums when they come back in. If they decide to opt in, there's no guarantee they would get the same level of cover they had before. Legislation which starts by putting members' interests first appears to be doing exactly the opposite, at least in some cases.

If we look at the Treasury Laws Amendment (2019 Tax Integrity and Other Measures No. 1) Bill 2019, once again we find ambiguity concerning rightful discussions. Many submissions expressed concerns over what can and cannot be claimed as a deduction under this proposal. It was highlighted by the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. They asked whether newly constructed apartments with structural faults would be caught up in this legislation. The Inspector-General of Taxation and Taxation Ombudsman felt that the bill, as drafted, did not sufficiently discern between taxpayers who are engaging with the ATO on their debt and those who are not. The IGTO acknowledged that, should a business be accidentally put on a list and reported to a credit bureau, it would be potentially catastrophic.

Taxpayers may not be aware that this bill amends the Taxation Administration Act 1953 'to allow taxation officers to disclose the business tax debt information of a taxpayer to a credit reporting bureau when certain conditions and safeguards' are met. The Inspector-General of Taxation and the Taxation Ombudsman believe that that isn't as watertight as it should be. A number of submitters put very cogent, well-researched evidence to the committee; it hasn't been addressed in the legislation or by the government at all.

We come to the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Productivity Commission Response Part 2 and Other Measures) Bill. There were a small number of affected manufacturers in Australia using the innovation provisions to safeguard their business, safeguard their investment in their small business and maintain manufacturing in Australia, using the innovation patent system to do so. This is all being disbanded, and in its place is a promise to do something which is not exactly helping those small businesses that had a use for this protection.

We go on to the next bill, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill. The front page of the Financial Review yesterday said: 'We're not really sure what this is actually going to do. The banks want to charge a bit more interest.' In effect, it's a bill to provide a subsidy for 10,000 first home buyers. It's a subsidy that will stand in the place of lender mortgage insurance for up to 10,000 first home buyers. Instead of having a 20 per cent deposit you will need only five per cent—the government will guarantee the 15 per cent—and the marketplace will give you a loan. Most of the commentary in this space is that first home buyers grants actually put up the price of housing. When we questioned the Treasury and other departments about this, about the investigation, research and advice that was given to the minister before he brought the scheme in, they answered: 'Parliament was prorogued. We weren't able to do any of that.' When we questioned NHFIC and others about how it was actually going to operate—did they think it would actually bring 110,000 first home buyers to the market?—the answer, basically, was that we'd have to wait and see.

These pieces of legislation have some commonality. They are poorly drafted, there is a lack of research underpinning them and there are unintended consequences. We will know in the course of this parliament what those unintended consequences will be, I'm sure of that.

Next is the Treasury Laws Amendment (Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct) Bill. The report on this bill by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee said:

A key concern with the bill is the significant ambiguity in the definitions around which prohibited conduct is established and the remedies are constructed. As a consequence, some submissions argued the bill will create complexity and uncertainty, result in legal challenges whose costs will be passed to consumers, and will discourage investment in required new and replacement electricity generation.

I'm not making this up. This is from evidence drawn from inquiry, submission, testing and weighting of evidence in a government concluded report that was signed by the chair of the committee. We know that the only entity in this space that has incurred the wrath of the regulator is the Snowy Hydro scheme, which was fined $400,000 and asked to pay $100,000 to the regulator's costs for not following correct instructions about the dispatching of power. At the time it was owned by the federal government, the New South Wales government and the Victorian government. The evidence in this space about misconduct is that the Snowy Hydro scheme got fined but none of the other retailers, none of the other electricity providers, got fined. From the talk going on around this bill there appears to have been a bit of a competition between two rather large egos—on one hand someone from AGL and on the other hand someone from the government—who had different views about the world. Some intemperate remarks were made and the 'big stick' legislation came about. No-one in the industry supports it, the Law Council says it will probably fail at the first challenge and the minister in his speech when he introduced it said it's unlikely to be used.

So here we are, six months into a government, with six bills having gone to the legislation committee for inquiry. To add insult to injury, there is the Treasury Laws Amendment (Recovering Unpaid Superannuation) Bill, which forgives those people who haven't paid superannuation for their workers for 26 years. If you come forward and have a rough stab at guessing your records, you'll be forgiven penalties and the like. The penalties are reasonably significant, but this bill legalises wage theft. It sends a message that wage theft is acceptable. The evidence is that amnesties are not effective. Employers are not compelled to keep records beyond six or seven years, and this amnesty for 26 years defies belief. But that's the first six months or thereabouts of this government. We look forward to some legislation coming through the Sneate Economics Legislation Committee which we can talk about as being good legislation, because I haven't seen any. Of these six pieces of legislation, most are poorly drafted, have unintended consequences and don't meet the requirements of what they set out to do.