I rise to speak on the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026. The coalition will not oppose this bill. Reducing red tape and unnecessary regulation is something the coalition strongly supports. Good regulation protects Australians, but excessive and complex regulation increases costs for businesses and households. It slows down investment, discourages innovation and makes it harder for businesses to employ and grow. Reducing red tape isn't about removing safeguards. It's about making sure regulation serves the public interest efficiently without imposing unnecessary costs and burdens on Australians.

The truth is that Australia doesn't have a good story to tell when it comes to the regulatory burden we impose on business. Australia's administrative and regulatory burden is the second highest in the G7, behind only Japan, and we rank 37th out of 43 OECD countries for administrative and regulatory burden. Small businesses spend almost a full day every week dealing with compliance requirements, with 40 per cent of small-business owners saying the impost of payroll tax and workplace laws has stopped them from hiring staff. According to the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the cost to businesses of complying with federal regulation has risen from $65 billion in 2013 to $160 billion today. At the same time, productivity has fallen by more than five per cent under this Labor government. If we are serious about lifting productivity and improving living standards, reducing unnecessary regulation must be part of the solution. That is why the coalition welcomes sensible measures contained in this bill.

We also need to be honest about what this bill actually delivers. The government says the bill supports its work to build an economy that is more dynamic, more resilient and more productive for all Australians. This bill is a step towards simplifying and removing some unnecessary regulation, but it is only a small step.

The bill includes 20 measures, amending 25 acts, repealing two acts and affecting 19 Commonwealth agencies. There are worthwhile administrative improvements throughout it. Schedule 1 includes amendments to simplify business regulation, including reforms to trademarks, plant breeders rights, reporting requirements and customs administration. The changes to trademarks and plant breeders rights will reduce unnecessary administrative burdens and make it easier for Australian businesses and innovators to protect their ideas and bring new products to market. The bill also improves the efficiency of Australia's trade remedy system, with faster decisions and refunds providing greater certainty for businesses. The extension of time between gender equality target cycles will also reduce the administrative burden on employers.

Schedule 2 contains measures to streamline regulation, including modernising administrative processes in social security, family assistance and child support legislation. It also repeals two acts that are now redundant. That is sensible housekeeping, but it's hardly the kind of reform that will materially change the lives of Australian businesses or shift the productivity dial.

Schedule 3 supports the government's 'tell us once' approach. This is a concept the coalition supports. In fact, it was an approach the coalition announced in the last parliament. Australians should not have to repeatedly provide the same information to different government agencies. Government agencies should work together and make better use of information that Australians have already provided. These measures reduce duplication, improve service delivery and make interactions with government simpler and less frustrating. That is the type of practical deregulation the coalition supports.

Schedule 4 contains largely technical amendments. One measure provides eligible former ADF members with a current Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation membership with the option to access a retirement income product through CSC. This is a good measure. It gives relevant former ADF members the option to access a retirement income product through their existing superannuation administrator rather than having to access a product from another administrator.

There are sensible measures contained in this bill, but ultimately the contents of the bill are relatively minor in nature. They are not the kinds of reforms that will materially reduce the regulatory burden facing Australian businesses. In practice, many of these changes will make life easier for government agencies more than they will materially reduce the regulatory burden facing Australian businesses, and that is the broader problem with Labor's approach to deregulation. Australia needs a much more ambitious productivity and deregulation agenda than this bill delivers.

While the government is making modest changes to administrative processes, the size of the regulatory burden and the bureaucracy behind it continues to grow. New research from the Institute of Public Affairs shows the federal government's red-tape army is set to grow to more than 110,000 staff by the end of the 2027 financial year. That is more than 19,000 additional regulatory staff—a 21 per cent increase since 2023. The cost to taxpayers of employing these regulatory staff will reach approximately $16 billion in 2027. That's an increase of $4.2 billion, or 34 per cent, since 2023. More than half of the total federal government workforce is now engaged in regulatory activity. The Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water portfolio is projected to have the fastest growth in regulatory staff, increasing by 14.6 per cent in just one year and more than doubling since 2023.

Previous research from the Institute of Public Affairs shows federal red tape increased by 88 per cent between 2005 and 2023, growing two-thirds faster than the national economy over the same period. That is the scale of Australia's red-tape problem. More bureaucrats are creating and enforcing more rules while Australian businesses are spending more time and money complying with them. Every hour a business spends dealing with unnecessary regulation is an hour it cannot spend investing, employing, expanding or increasing productivity. Those costs ultimately flow through to Australians through higher prices, lower investment and fewer employment opportunities. You can't regulate your way to higher productivity.

The government's response cannot simply be to make a few administrative processes easier while continuing to expand the bureaucracy responsible for creating and enforcing regulation. Australia needs fewer rules, fewer forms, fewer regulators and less red tape. And that brings me to the one measure in this bill that the coalition does have serious concerns about. Part 4 of schedule 2 removes a procedural fairness safeguard enacted by the parliament in 2017. It removes the requirement for the Australian Human Rights Commission to notify a person when an adverse allegation is made about them in a discrimination complaint if they are not formally a respondent. Under the proposed changes, whether that person is informed will depend on the president's discretion rather than a clear legal requirement.

We have a simple question about this measure: why should a person not be told when serious allegations have been made about them? Allegations can still damage a person's reputation, even if there are no legal consequences. They can concern a person's conduct. They can form part of a complaint being considered by a statutory body, and the person who is the subject of those allegations should at least have the opportunity to know that those allegations have been made. Imagine a colleague makes a complaint about your employer to the commission and names you in that complaint, making allegations about your behaviour. You would want to know about that. The coalition believes that you would definitely want to know about that and that you should be advised. But, under this change proposed in this bill by this government, there is a chance that you wouldn't. You could discover, through a Google search of your own name, that you had been named in a complaint. That is a real risk from this change.

Why is this safeguard being removed? Because the commission estimates it can save approximately 450 staff hours a year. Think about that—450 hours. That is the justification for weakening a procedural fairness safeguard. Administrative convenience should not come at the expense of procedural fairness. This measure is about reducing paperwork for public servants at the expense of processes that matter to Australians who rely on them for their protection.

Fairness requires that people are informed when allegations concerning them are raised, and this is precisely the kind of change that deserves proper parliamentary scrutiny. This is precisely the kind of change that deserves sound, proper, full parliamentary scrutiny, noting it was an initiative that was put into the law by this parliament in 2017. Yet, when the coalition raised these concerns, Labor and the Australian Greens refused to refer this bill to a Senate committee for further inquiry. That is tremendously disappointing. If the government is confident that this change is justified, it should have no objection to allowing the parliament to properly examine its consequences.

The coalition will move three amendments in relation to part 4 of schedule 2. We'll move a second reading amendment to express our concern that replacing a mandatory notification requirement with a discretionary power diminishes procedural fairness for people who are the subject of adverse allegations. It also seeks to refer part 4 of schedule 2 to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry, with a reporting date of 9 September. This is a modest and reasonable request. Where the government is proposing to remove a procedural fairness safeguard, the parliament should have the opportunity to properly examine the consequences.

We'll also move a substantive amendment to remove part 4 of schedule 2 from the bill, as well as an amendment that would partially repeal Labor's ban on self-managed super funds using limited recourse borrowing arrangements to purchase a new residential property. The amendment also changes the definition of 'business real property' to 'commercial property' to enable SMSFs to invest in mixed-use properties and support even more housing supply. This is a modest amendment that will fix Labor's failure to distinguish between new and existing homes when it struck its deal with the Greens to ban SMSFs from investing in residential property to secure the passage of their toxic taxes. According to industry, these changes would help unlock up to 22,000 new dwellings each year. At a time when Australia is facing a housing crisis, the government should be doing everything it can to boost housing supply, not reducing it simply because it needs the Greens votes to pass legislation.

The coalition is not seeking to obstruct the worthwhile reforms contained elsewhere in this bill. We are seeking to preserve a procedural fairness safeguard that should not be removed simply because the commission considers the existing processes to be administratively inconvenient. There is an important distinction between removing burdensome bureaucracy and removing safeguards that protect accountability and fairness.

The coalition supports sensible deregulation. We support reducing unnecessary red tape. We support making it easier for Australians and Australian businesses to interact with government. There are measures in this bill that achieve those objectives, but Australia needs much more than this. At a time when Australia's productivity challenge is becoming more acute, Australians should expect more than legislative housekeeping dressed up as regulatory reform. They should expect a government that tackles the regulatory burden that is holding back business investment and productivity. They should expect a government that reduces the number of rules that businesses have to navigate, the number of forms they have to fill out, and the number of regulators they have to deal with. They should expect a government that understands that every hour spent complying with unnecessary regulation is an hour that could instead be spent investing, employing and growing.

The coalition will support sensible regulation, but we will not support removing safeguards that protect accountability and fairness. This bill contains some worthwhile reforms, but it also highlights the limits of Labor's approach to regulatory action. Australia needs a more ambitious agenda for deregulation, productivity and economic growth, and that is an agenda the coalition will continue to pursue. With those remarks, I commend the bill to the Senate.

Senator Smith, before you sit down, are you going to move the second reading amendment?

I move the second reading amendment on sheet 3953:

At the end of the motion, add ", and:

(a) the Senate:

(i) notes that Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the bill removes a procedural fairness safeguard enacted by Parliament in 2017,

(ii) expresses its concern that replacing a mandatory notification requirement with a discretionary power diminishes procedural fairness for persons who are the subject of adverse allegations;

(iii) is of the opinion that the Parliament should not weaken procedural fairness protections without compelling justification and proper parliamentary scrutiny, and

(iv) notes that Labor and the Australian Greens refused to refer the bill to a Senate committee;

(b) Part 4 of Schedule 2 to the bill (removing adverse allegation notifications) be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 9 September 2026; and

(c) further consideration of the bill be made an order of the day for the first sitting day after the committee has reported".

I indicate that my party won't be opposing the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026. On a broader level, the various elements in the bill proposing a tell-us-once model, so that information does not have to be repeatedly handed to agencies, has some sense in it, of course being mindful that people's privacy and protections for their data are always central to the Greens' concerns on regulatory reform. But I won't be addressing that at length.

What I will be speaking to in the second reading debate is really the content of a Greens amendment that speaks to a lack in this bill. The bill in part deals with the information that needs to be provided by people when they enter Australia. I'm sure many of us in this chamber have experienced the joy of filling in the Incoming Passenger Card. It's not just Australian citizens who fill that in. Foreign nationals of course are also required to fill in the Incoming Passenger Card. Other countries gather far more information that is relevant to their national interest when people cross the border and move into their country, either as a citizen returning or as a foreigner seeking to visit or spend time in that country.

One of the key pieces of information that is not sought by the Australian government is whether people have fought for foreign militaries. Of course, even Australian citizens are not prohibited under Australian law from fighting with foreign militaries. Whether that is a sensible provision is not a matter that I intend to explore in relation to this amendment. But I firmly believe, and my party, the Greens, firmly believe, that the Australian government should know, if somebody is coming into this country, whether they have fought for a foreign military, whether they've fought in a foreign conflict and the circumstances related to their engagement in a foreign war or a foreign conflict. It is remarkable that the Department of Home Affairs does not even pretend to keep track of how many Australians are serving with foreign militaries. Nor do they routinely track people coming to Australia who have fought for a foreign military. It is a matter that Home Affairs, our border control, seems to totally ignore.

The Greens are proposing that information contained on the passenger card should include some basic questions. I reference the amendments moved on sheet 4039. They include:

(1) The information that must be provided by a person entering Australia … includes … answers to the following questions:

(a) "Have you been a member of a foreign military within the last 12 months?";

(b) if the answer to the question … is affirmative—"For each foreign military you have been a member of within the last 12 months, what is the name of the foreign military of which you were a member?".

(2) The regulations must provide for the questions … to be included in the person's passenger card … for the purposes of—

Australian law under the Migration Act. Why is this necessary? First of all, this would be a simple change to allow the Australian government to keep track of what the Greens believe should be critical information about Australian citizens and foreigners seeking to come to this country. At the moment, we simply have a black hole—zero information.

We just had at the Sydney Marathon a member of the Golani Brigade of the Israeli military running. That is the unit responsible for, amongst other things, the killing of 15 medical staff and first responders in Rafah, Gaza, in March 2025. Nobody checked. Nobody asked. The information that a member of the Golani Brigade, amongst other Israeli military, was running in the Sydney Marathon wasn't picked up by Home Affairs because they didn't want to pick it up. They obviously didn't want to raise the issue of whether it's appropriate to have people who have been engaged in what the Greens believe is a genocide, what millions of Australians believe is a genocide and what international tribunals and bodies of the UN have found to be a genocide. Home Affairs didn't want to know, because then they'd have to start asking inconvenient questions such as, 'Is it appropriate for people who have been part of a military engaged in obscene war crimes to come to Australia?' Millions of Australians would say, no, it's deeply inappropriate. The way Home Affairs under Labor avoids dealing with that question is 'don't ask; don't tell'. It's the same unprincipled approach that Labor takes to whether or not the US brings nuclear weapons into this country: Don't ask. Don't tell. We'd rather not know. You just do your thing.

Critically, the information about those members of a foreign military wasn't uncovered by Home Affairs. It wasn't raised by the government. It was raised by a Facebook post that they put on. Not only is it about members of foreign countries coming here; we also know that some 500 Australians, as of March last year, were in the Israeli military. We don't know that from Home Affairs, because Home Affairs don't check. Think of that. Five hundred Australians of military age went to Israel and fought for the Israeli military, and Australia has not checked—doesn't review it, doesn't care, doesn't look at it. How did we find that out? Not from Home Affairs but from an Israeli FOI done by an Israeli NGO who was troubled about the number of foreign fighters and was trying to track where the people who'd been fighting in Gaza had come from.

We could speak more about that obscene conflict in Gaza, the war crimes happening in Lebanon and the Israeli military. But I want to be clear, on behalf of my party, that we are equally concerned about members of the Russian military who are engaged in conflict and what have been repeated reports of war crimes in Ukraine. Look at the conflict that's happening in Sudan. Look at other foreign militaries engaged in war crimes—the US military officers who fired upon a school in Iran, members of the Iranian military. This is information that should be available to Australia to make decisions about people coming to Australia, and Home Affairs does not track it. This amendment would be a simple change to address this. We've put forward the amendment that would require an incoming passenger to say if they've fought in a foreign military over the previous 12 months and, if so, which one.

The government may argue that the Australian travel declaration is primarily focused on customs enforcement and it's not appropriate to do here. However, the Australian travel declaration, which is the passenger card, also asks questions about criminal history, criminal antecedents and prohibited material. Asking whether or not you've engaged in military service over the past 12 months is not substantively different. I would have thought that most people would assume the government would be checking to see if Australians are leaving to fight in foreign militaries—checking whether you're going and putting on a Russian uniform and fighting, checking whether someone's going off and putting on an Israeli uniform and fighting or checking whether someone's going and putting on a US uniform and fighting. Most people would assume that this is checked by our government, but it's a head in the sand: don't ask; don't tell. It's all too tricky.

There are conflicts that are in obvious breach of international law. I've named some of them here: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's genocide in Gaza. At the moment, the US military is engaged in killing people on the high seas and extrajudicial murder. There's the US's unlawful attack on Iran. It's very relevant—whether or not people have been engaged in wars where there seem to be no limits and where war crimes and obscene, unregulated violence and killing are the norm. Without oversight of Australians fighting in foreign militaries, we are potentially providing a safe haven for war criminals. These amendments are the first step to ensuring that we don't do that and that international law is adhered to.

When you come home to Australia, Border Force ask you if you've been hiking or been to a farm, but they don't ask you if you've been fighting in a war. How cooked is that? Chris Barrie, who served as Chief of the Defence Force from 1992 to 2002, said the lack of action from government on this is 'another example of the great Australian complacency', and he's damn right. I don't always agree with Jennifer Parker. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that I very rarely agree with Jennifer Parker. But she was right when she said:

When somebody is motivated to go overseas and fight in hostilities for a side that is not necessarily aligned to Australian values, they're going over there and potentially being more radicalised towards those values.

And then bringing back someone who has been through that experience, who has engaged in a conflict and fighting for a side whose values don't align with Australia, can potentially pose security risks in Australia because they're bringing that skill set, that experience, that radicalisation back to Australia.

She's absolutely right.

Think about someone who fought in the Golani Brigade and was part of a unit that killed 15 medical staff and first responders in Rafah. Are they values that we would agree with? I don't believe so. Think about somebody who fought for the Russian military in the war in Ukraine. Are they values that we would agree with? The Greens will move these amendments because we think these are questions that should be asked and we think there are checks and balances that should be put in place. I commend the amendments to the Senate.

I rise in support of the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026 and foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name. The bill makes a series of positive changes. The introduction of 'tell us once' reporting, the streamlining and the technical corrections each take something off the time businesses lose to administration. But it's important to see this bill in the context of the broader regulatory environment. Less than 12 months ago, we passed the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2025. That bill was directed towards similar ends, but what I hear from ACT small businesses is a story of increased regulatory burden. The trend towards more regulation of small businesses doesn't seem to have turned.

A few weeks ago I travelled to Sydney to attend the COSBOA National Small Business Summit in Darling Harbour. Many of the small businesses and their representatives told me just how hard it is to deal with the regulatory burden placed on them. One of the things we don't talk about enough in this place is that small-business owners are getting smashed twice at the moment. Like almost all Australians, they have a mortgage or are paying rent themselves. They have to put food on the table, and they're seeing the prices go up. They have home and contents insurance, and they're seeing the prices go up there. They're experiencing everything that all of us are experiencing. Then, in their small business, they are in an economy where more and more Australians are tightening their belts and spending less. They are being squeezed at the moment. They're ending up spending hours and hours of often unpaid time on the weekends or late at night dealing with regulations.

Following these conversations, I started to look at work that has been done on this issue, and I would like to suggest to colleagues that they may wish to read an article from the Chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood titled 'The red tape impulse', published in the long-form policy magazine Inflection Points. The Productivity Commission has counted more than a doubling of restrictive terms in legislative instruments since 2006. The Australian Institute of Company Directors has found that the cost of complying with Commonwealth regulation has jumped from $65 billion in 2013 to $160 billion this year.

This bill does little to reduce those ballooning costs. I want to be very clear: regulation is necessary. Most regulation exists because somebody learned something the hard way. We need to be careful about saying that all regulation is bad. Clearly we need regulation to protect Australians and ensure that they know that the food that they're eating is what is on the label. The same goes for medicines they have. There is a whole range of other areas where we clearly need these protections in place.

My concern is that the human instinct to regulate is strong and at times misdirected. More than that, regulatory effort is not often directed towards where it does the most good and is not about whether the businesses affected most heavily are the ones that should be. Consider who carries the burden of regulation now. A business with four staff has no compliance manager. When a new obligation arrives, the person filling in the form is the same person who was going to do the rostering, chase the invoices and open up in the morning. The paperwork is written as though it costs everyone the same, and it costs the smallest operators the most.

In conversations with ACT small businesses, the frustration comes back to the amount of time spent on compliance. Nobody objects to being held to a standard. They object to waiting months to learn whether or not they have met it, all while continuing to pay costs. Now consider Canberra households dealing with companies at the other end of the scale—big businesses. Here in Australia we have an economy that is made up of incredibly concentrated sectors—duopolies and the big four. We don't have enough competition in this country. Clearly the parliament needs to shoulder some of the blame for the way that decisions have been made, over many decades now, that favour these companies and that have allowed the status quo to not just continue but see the concentration of market share and, in some cases, the blatant price gouging of Australians.

Let's come back to the Canberra household who has to get their car insured. Car insurance premiums have risen by about 50 per cent in six years. When ASIC examined 320 renewal documents covering roughly seven-tenths of the market, it found insurers' explanations for those rises in generic language tucked away in supplementary documents, and it found that customers who rang up and pushed back got a lower price nearly a third of the time—the loyalty tax that we see too often in Australia. ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland put it plainly:

There is no upside to loyalty.

The household that stays put and pays on time is quietly charged more for doing so.

Let's go to the airline industry. Take Jetstar, which from February next year will include one underseat bag in the fare and charge separately for the overhead locker. It's 33 bucks for the pleasure of taking a carry-on bag between Sydney and Melbourne and on a Melbourne to Tokyo booking, checked by the Guardian Australia, it's 86 bucks to take a bag over and $108 to bring it home. Of course, fares aren't going down to match, so the advertised price is no longer the real cost price of the trip. And parliament just sits here and allows this to happen. We saw this through the airline inquiry—the allegations of slot hoarding, the conduct of Qantas. Qantas, in reply, was saying: 'Well, it's actually an incredibly competitive market. We just happen to pocket 80 per cent of the profits here in Australia in this incredibly competitive market.'

This contrast between large businesses and small businesses is alarming. A business with four staff must prove itself repeatedly to a variety of government agencies, while a company with millions of customers can lift a premium by half without explaining why. The people inside that system are not indifferent to this. The incentives point the other way. A minister who announced a new program has something to show at the end of the year, while an official who spends 12 months untangling overlapping requirements has an absence of regulation to point to. At the moment, nobody's measuring absences.

The member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, made much of this case in the House and moved a second reading amendment to this bill. I want to acknowledge that work. My second reading amendment builds on one the member for Wentworth put forward in the other place. It asked the government to develop and implement regulatory reduction targets and strategies, to make senior officials and departments accountable for deregulation, to strengthen the Office of Impact Analysis and give it greater independence, and to fund the National Productivity Fund at a level that could repeat what national competition policy achieved in the 1990s.

The government has identified the right problem. I'm asking it to be measured against that problem rather than just returning to this place with another bill next year and the year after that and our continuing to talk about easing the regulatory burden. Reports from the ground say that that is not happening. In fact, we're heading in the other direction where we're just constantly adding regulations that are almost always, you could argue, very well-meaning. But it's a burden for those who have to deal with it. I think there will be a real consequence of our failure as a parliament if we don't start to grapple with this issue—not just by talking about it but by actually removing unnecessary regulatory burden.

I want to end by congratulating the government on a commitment made in this year's budget. In the budget, a commitment was made to reduce regulatory burdens by $10.2 billion each year. That is a strong commitment. I very much welcome it. I thank them for it, but it obviously has to be backed by action. It's the government's responsibility to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses and make sure consumers are protected from the bad practices of large businesses in concentrated markets that clearly lack competition. I will keep pushing to get this done.

The Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026—what a mouthful!— introduces a series of mostly minor changes to administrative rules across multiple areas of government, which will supposedly reduce red tape, simplify government administration, streamline regulatory processes, repeal outdated legislation and make technical corrections—meaning 'fix their earlier mistakes'. There are a lot of earlier mistakes from this government.

I'll start with the provisions in this bill which One Nation does support. On business regulation, the bill supposedly simplifies regulations affecting businesses, claiming to reduce reporting duplication, simplify intellectual property administration, make patent and trademark disciplinary processes stronger, simplify plant breeders' rights renewals, speed up antidumping refunds and simplify broadcasting reporting requirements. Then, on social security, several amendments supposedly include clarifying de facto relationship assessments, simplifying foreign currency calculations and allowing more flexibility for proof-of-life requirements for pensioners overseas. Then there's the Human Rights Commission. The bill removes the requirement for the Human Rights Commission to notify third parties when mentioned in discrimination complaints yet are not respondents. The government argues this removes unnecessary administration. Defence superannuation: former Australian Defence Force members gain access to Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation account based retirement products, which turn super into a tax-free regular income. This is probably one of the more tangible benefits in the bill. Customs and antidumping supposedly speeds up refunds, streamlines tariff concessions, fixes technical errors then again fixes technical errors, and aligns antidumping rules with World Trade Organization arrangements.

Now the One Nation objections commence. The bill ties Australian law to two international treaties, the Madrid protocol and the agreement of Nice, which together regulate international patents and trademarks. The bill provides that where the international community changes the rules in those agreements, Australian law is changed automatically—no local scrutiny, no parliamentary scrutiny, just an immediate change of our law. Now, I accept the law around international trademarks and patents is working well, and this measure does not threaten Australian sovereignty in a material way. In fact, the measures act in the best interests of Australians. For this reason, One Nation will support this measure; although we will keep a close eye on this government's reach, and each and every attempt to compromise Australian sovereignty through international treaties over which Australia has no control.

Workplace gender equality: the bill introduces a 12-month gap between reporting cycles, aligns with Commonwealth reporting dates and changes target timing. These are constructive measures to reduce the burden of reporting on workplace gender equality and will be supported. Nonetheless, let's just take a moment here. I have some questions. How can there be a workplace gender act drafted to encourage employment of women while this government can't define what is a woman? In fact, it appears we're back to a binary choice. Take note of that. I'll say it again. In fact, it appears we're back to a binary choice: men and women. Men and women—let that sink in.

Even worse, the provision entrenches discrimination. The Australian Public Service is 60 per cent female. 'Great', say the feminists, 'nothing wrong with that'. Journalists are 58 per cent female, so of course that story doesn't get a run. Dentists are 57 per cent female, doctors are 48 per cent female and, with 67 per cent of students being female, health will be a female-dominated industry in the next five years. University students—68 per cent. Not only is the workplace gender act sexist, it's discriminatory. It highlights any incidence of men outnumbering women while looking the other way when women outnumber men. Fact: it is a feminist attack on men, on families and on the very foundation of our society. You'll hear more from One Nation about this. You can bet on it.

Moving on, Tell us once: the government wants agencies to share more information internally so Australians do not continually provide the same information. Examples include healthcare identifiers, nominee arrangements, social security administration, proof-of-life certificates, customs processes. The government claims this will cause less paperwork, faster services, and reduce duplication. It reminds me of President Reagan saying, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help,' and it's a massive problem waiting to happen. Just listen to this: in case there is any doubt as to the intent of the bill, the explanatory memorandum is clear. The bill, 'enables the government to use any of a person's information it already holds to speed up and simplify administrative provisions'.

We've seen this before, with tragic consequences. It was only a few years ago the government used the data it had in the Department of Social Security to match with the data it had in the taxation department to catch social security fraudsters, and made tens of thousands of wrong matches, sent debt notifications out to people who didn't owe anything—not a thing—cut off social security with no due process, and, as a result, people committed suicide.

Today? Welcome to robodebt 2.0. The provisions in this bill could be used to justify a repeat of that process—except in this case it isn't a simple one-to-one match. They'll be matching people across multiple departments and multiple computer systems and really praying and hoping they make the right matches this time. What's changed since robodebt to suggest the government could get the process right this time? Nothing has changed.

In 2019, after the failure of robodebt, the government commenced a technology uplift to get the computer systems in use in each government department talking to each other. This was to allow data sharing and improved audit—so we were told. Fair enough. The program was called GovERP, the government Enterprise Resource Planning initiative, which was known as the Shared Services Transformation Program. Sounds great, doesn't it? One after another, member departments pulled out. No progress was made, and the initiative was shuttered in 2024.

Even worse, the platform that was created to sit between departments to hook them up was deemed unfit for future use and trashed. Our bureaucrats managed to spend five years authoring a complete failure. How much did this learning exercise cost taxpayers? It was $2.2 billion. The government has already spent $2.2 billion trying to get departments to talk to each other and failed miserably—failed comprehensively—yet here we are with a bill to share information between departments. It appears irrelevant that their computers are not technically capable of talking to each other to share the data. The last time we tried this, people died.

There may be progress in data sharing that has not been documented, but One Nation has submitted a second reading amendment to stand this bill in the list for a month while the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee examines the technical feasibility of the proposal. There's nothing urgent in this bill. It has not been to a committee. Our amendment is a modest referral that seeks to clear up a simple question. The question is this: will the passing of this bill as written cause, or enable, robodebt 2.0? Let's find out before the Senate makes a horrible mistake. In concluding, I foreshadow second reading amendment 3939 standing in my name.

On the morning after the 2025 federal election, the Treasurer, Mr Jim Chalmers, went on national television and made a grand promise to the Australian people. He told the interviewer that, while Labor's first term was 'primarily inflation without forgetting productivity', its second term would be 'primarily productivity without forgetting inflation'. To signal this newfound economic urgency, the Treasurer hastily convened a productivity summit. Before the ink was even dry on the name badges, though, that was rebadged into the Economic Reform Roundtable.

It has now been over a year since that 29-hour talkfest wrapped up and, looking at the state of our nation's economy, it's painfully clear that the Treasurer has managed to forget about both productivity and inflation. Both have gone terribly south on his watch. That summit was designed to reboot productivity in Australia and to get our economy moving again, supposedly because the chapter on inflation had been closed. We know that's not the case. Let's just have a look at what our productivity picture is. The Reserve Bank has been forced to downgrade our medium-term productivity growth assumption to just 0.7 per cent per year. It's never been that low.

That's the medium-term outlook. In the short term, the RBA is predicting a further 0.5 per cent reduction in productivity growth just across this calendar year. The latest national accounts figures that came out just last week confirmed that overall labour productivity growth—that's real GDP per hour worked—over the past year was minus 0.2 per cent. That means that each worker is producing less with the same amount of inputs and with the same amount of time as they were two years ago.

Why does this matter? It matters because these aren't just dry economic statistics. They aren't just for people who keep score of these things. Low productivity or, in fact, zero productivity growth or, even worse, as we've seen in Australia under this government, declining productivity is the direct cause of stagnant real wages. It's the direct cause of persistently high inflation. It's the direct cause of declining living standards.

Let's look at the other part of Treasurer Jim Chalmers's challenge after having said that inflation had been slayed and he was now moving on to productivity. Australia's inflation rate remains stubborn at 3½ per cent. That's higher than the United States, the United Kingdom, the eurozone, Japan and Canada. Because of high inflation, household budgets are stretched to breaking point. Core inflation, or mean trimmed inflation, has been outside the RBA's target range now for over four years. For over four years, it's been outside the RBA's target range, which means prices are increasing faster than the RBA is comfortable with, and it's only putting upward pressure on interest rates. We've got inflation over the past four years above the RBA's target range. We've had three interest rate rises so far from the RBA this year trying to get on top of inflation, with all the indications being that a fourth may be coming. That's what market participants are predicting. We've got a per capita GDP growth that's stagnant. The national accounts showed that per capita GDP growth was stagnant in the last quarter. That is that the population grew at the same rate as the economy. And we've got real wages—that is people's take-home pay after adjusting for inflation, the fact that they have to pay more on goods—still going backwards. They're still lower now than when Labor came into office.

After that productivity summit last year, I told this chamber that I was none the wiser about what it had actually achieved. Today, I can stand here with absolute certainty and say it has achieved nothing. Productivity is worse than it was when the government convened that roundtable. Inflation is worse than when the government convened that roundtable.

That brings us to the legislation before us today. The coalition will not oppose the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill, because we support practical commonsense measures that cut red tape and streamline government operations. But let's be very clear about the modest aims that are contained in this bill. This isn't going to get productivity moving again. It will at best remove some small points of friction within the economy.

The bill contains 20 measures across some 25 acts, impacting 19 Commonwealth agencies. Schedule 1 delivers sensible administrative relief, modernising trademarks, plant breeders' rights and customs procedures, so Australian innovators face fewer hurdles getting ideas to market. Schedules 2 and 3 advance a 'tell us once' approach across social security, family assistance and child support legislation—a principle the coalition strongly supports so citizens aren't forced to repeatedly provide the exact same data to multiple departments. Schedule 4 includes technical fixes, including allowing former ADF personnel with Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation accounts to seamlessly access retirement income products.

These are all modest and worthwhile adjustments, but let us be completely honest about what this bill actually is. This is not bold economic reform. This is not a productivity agenda. This is not Paul Keating mark 2. This is just legislative housekeeping dressed up as a deregulation strategy. The primary beneficiaries of these changes won't be hard-pressed small-business owners. They won't be families trying to make their sums add up around the kitchen table. They won't be employees. They won't be young people. They won't be people getting into the housing market. They will overwhelmingly be Canberra public servants who have slightly fewer forms to process.

Worse still is that buried within this modest housekeeping exercise is a measure that fundamentally undermines basic Australian standards of procedural fairness. Part 4 of schedule 2 removes the mandatory legal requirement for the Australian Human Rights Commission to notify an individual when an adverse allegation is made against them in a complaint unless they are formally named as a respondent. So, under this change, whether an Australian is informed that serious allegations have been lodged against their name and reputation will be left entirely to the subjective discretion of the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Imagine a workplace complaint made about your employer where serious allegations are made about your personal conduct. You would expect and deserve the basic right to know. That is fundamentally part of the principles of justice and due process—to know the accusations made against you, to know your accuser. But, under this proposed change, you could be left completely in the dark, discovering these allegations months later via a Google search.

Reputations can be ruined by allegations alone, and we have seen far too many instances of the Australian Human Rights Commission's procedures being weaponised by vexatious individuals solely with the aim of harming the reputation of someone with whose political opinion they disagree or with whom they have some sort of personal animosity. In those circumstances, we should not be stripping away these sorts of rights. What is the government's justification for doing this? To save the Human Rights Commission an estimated 450 staff hours per year. So we're driving productivity in the Human Rights Commission. This is where the government's productivity agenda has reached—stripping everyday citizens of some of their fundamental basic human rights. That's the price tag that Labor places on procedural fairness: giving people at the Human Rights Commission a slightly easier day in the office. We should never sacrifice fundamental legal protections for citizens simply to save bureaucrats from doing their job. We should never do that.

For that reason, the coalition will be moving two key amendments—firstly, a second reading amendment expressing the Senate's grave concern over this erosion of procedural fairness and referring part 4 of schedule 2, the offending part of this bill, to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for proper parliamentary scrutiny. Before we fiddle around with people's fundamental human rights, we should at least go through proper deliberative processes that this parliament is designed to carry out. Secondly, the coalition will be moving a substantive amendment in the Committee of the Whole to excise part 4 from the bill entirely and to preserve existing legal protections and safeguards as they are. Labor and the Greens have so far refused to refer this legislation to a committee. If the government, or the Greens, for that matter, truly believe that weakening natural justice and undermining fundamental procedural protections to save 450 hours of Public Service labour is defensible, they should not fear letting a Senate committee examine it.

This bill must be judged against the sheer scale of the regulatory crisis facing our country. New research from the Institute of Public Affairs reveals that the Commonwealth's red-tape army is on track to exceed 110,000 public servants by mid-2027, an increase of over 19,000 regulatory officers, or 21 per cent, since Labor took office. Taxpayers are now paying out $16 billion annually just to fund the bureaucrats who enforce these regulations, which is up 34 per cent in just four years. Today, more than half of the total federal Public Service is engaged in roles that involve regulatory activity. In DCCEEW, as it's called, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, regulatory staff levels have more than doubled since 2023. This explosive growth in government bureaucracy is strangling the productive capacity of the Australian economy. It's making it harder for any small business to operate. It's increasing their compliance costs. It's increasing the share of their payroll that has to go to tasks that are not about servicing a client, winning new business, making a new product or delivering a new service but are solely about meeting the government's demands that are placed upon them. If you've got an economy where regulation has become strangulation and where the primary purpose of a business is, because of regulation, to serve the whims and needs of the government rather than to serve its customers, then that is a problem. That is why we have seen private sector business failures at a record high in Australia. It's why we've seen economic growth so anaemic. That is why private sector investment has collapsed. It is why private sector wages are growing slowly—because the growth in regulation is putting a burden all across the economy.

Australia now ranks the second worst in the G7 for administrative and regulatory burden. Federal regulatory compliance costs have ballooned from $65 billion in 2013 to over $160 billion today. That's almost a threefold increase in slightly over a decade. The average small-business owner now spends nearly an entire working day every week—20 per cent of their time—doing nothing but filling out government compliance forms. The truth is, if you're a small-business owner, you're having to do that late at night, on the weekends or when you should be spending time with your partner or your children or being involved in your community. Instead, you're spending all this time dealing with this compliance burden that the government is placing on you. Forty per cent of small-business operators explicitly state that complex workplace laws and payroll taxes prevent them from hiring new staff.

This is fine for big business. If you're an ASX listed company—if you're an ASX 20—you've got a huge human resources department. You've got a huge office of general counsel. You've got huge numbers of compliance staff. But if you're a small business—if you're a sole trader, heaven forbid, but even if you're a small partnership or a mum-and-dad operation or a tradie or an accountant—you want to be using all the people that you've got to generate money for the business by selling to customers, by finding new customers, by delivering services, by innovating and by developing new products, rather than devoting one-fifth of your time and one-fifth of your headcount to compliance activities. Every single hour a business owner spends complying with heavy handed government mandates is an hour they cannot spend investing, innovating, growing, hiring and recruiting, and those compliance costs inevitably flow down to Australian families in the form of higher prices at the check-out, in the form of declining real wages, in the form of higher inflation and in the form of higher house prices.

The construction sector has been one of the worst performing sectors in terms of productivity in the Australian economy—productivity has gone backwards—but it is also the sector that has had to deal with the largest increase in compliance burdens. The National Construction Code has ballooned out to volumes and volumes of the Yellow Pages. If you want to know why productivity is going backwards, look at the compliance burden that's being placed on key sectors. You cannot regulate your way to higher productivity, and the government cannot continue to expand the administrative state with one hand while claiming to cut red tape with a handful of minor administrative tweaks in the other. That is all this bill is—a handful of minor administrative tweaks that are designed to make the operation of the federal public service in Canberra slightly more smooth, slightly more seamless and slightly easier.

Australia does not need more forms, more regulators or minor legislative tinkering. Australia needs lower taxes, simpler rules, fewer bureaucrats and a government that trusts and backs Australian enterprises to grow. The coalition supports and will always support genuine deregulation that liberates our economy but not bureaucratic housekeeping masquerading as structural reform. We will support the practical improvements in this bill, but we will fight to protect procedural fairness and people's fundamental human rights and continue demanding the real productivity agenda this country so desperately needs.

The coalition, while supporting the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026, strongly opposes the changes to the Australian Human Rights Commission Act which are part of the Albanese government's regulatory reform bill. As has been stated, we'll be moving an amendment to remove this section entirely because it seriously undermines procedural fairness for a person who has had a complaint made about their actions to the Human Rights Commission.

Sadly for Australians, the Australian Human Rights Commission under the Albanese government has serious problems. The President of the Human Rights Commission appointed by the Albanese government believes that an individual can be a biological man and also a woman at the same time. We have a Sex Discrimination Commissioner, again appointed by the Albanese government, who worries that transgender women—that is, biological males—can face discrimination for potential pregnancy in their workplace, and we have a Race Discrimination Commissioner appointed by, again, the Albanese government who wants to change Australia Day from 26 January and bemoans the 'undercurrent of nationalism' on our national day. He describes celebrating Australia Day as 'you've got to kiss the flag or go away'. That is the Human Rights Commission under the Albanese government. It is no longer about combating genuine human rights abuses from around the world. It has become a body that is simply promoting the Albanese government's agenda of a woke, divided Australia. This is the vision that the Australian people rejected when they said no to Anthony Albanese's divisive Voice.

The regulatory reform bill has a small part hidden away, as always, which removes the duty of the Human Rights Commission to inform someone if they have had adverse allegations made against them. These provisions are described innocuously enough as 'removing adverse allegation notifications'. But behind this bureaucratic description is a very simple question of fairness. If a person is accused in a formal complaint before the Australian Human Rights Commission of personally engaging in unlawful discrimination, should that person ordinarily be told that the allegation has been made? I believe the answer is yes. The government's bill says that in some circumstances the answer should be no. That is a mistake.

The bill before us repeals paragraph 46PF(7)(c) of the Australian Human Rights Commission Act. It then removes the related provisions governing the notification of a person who is not formally named as a respondent but who is nevertheless the subject of an adverse allegation in a complaint. This is not a technical amendment. It removes a deliberate procedural safeguard enacted by this parliament.

In 2017 the parliament considered significant reforms to the complaints handling procedures of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Those reforms followed intense public concern about a number of cases, including the proceedings involving students at the Queensland University of Technology. The explanatory memorandum for the 2017 legislation expressly referred to the QUT case. It recorded concerns that people involved in Human Rights Commission complaints were not always promptly notified that complaints had been made against them.

The circumstances of the QUT matter should give this Senate pause before it passes this legislation. The dispute arose from comments made by a number of university students online following an incident concerning access to an Indigenous computer laboratory. A complaint was made against the students under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, but the students themselves were not immediately brought into the process. A complaint was initially made to the Human Rights Commission in June 2014. The commission's own public chronology records and the students were only notified of the complaint on 28 July 2015, shortly before a conciliation conference on 3 August 2015—13 months after the complaint was made. Those affected were finally notified by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

That is clearly unacceptable. That is the very reason this safeguard was first put in the act. If someone has an adverse allegation made against them, they have a right to know. The QUT case was eventually dismissed by the Federal Court, because the court believed it had no reasonable prospect of success. But this case brought an important safeguard to the Human Rights Act—a safeguard that Mr Albanese, as Prime Minister of this country, now wants to abandon: procedural fairness. The Albanese government wants to throw procedural fairness in Australia out the door.

The 2017 reforms dealt with the notification of formal respondents and the notification of other people who were personally the subject of adverse allegations. The QUT controversy was a central part of the broader background to those reforms. The government's explanatory memorandum said that the case and evidence before the parliamentary inquiry had highlighted community concern around timely notification. But the justification given specifically for the adverse allegation safeguard went even further. The explanatory memorandum acknowledged that someone who is the subject of an adverse allegation but who is technically not a respondent cannot necessarily be sued simply because of that status. Then it made an important observation. It said that such a person may nevertheless suffer reputational harm. And it said in substance that those people are entitled to know that allegations have been made against them and should have the opportunity if they choose to challenge those allegations.

That was the parliament's rationale, and it was a sound one, because the difference between a respondent and a person who is the subject of an adverse allegation may matter enormously to lawyers. It may matter to the drafting of pleadings. It may matter to jurisdiction. But it does not necessarily matter very much to the human being whose conduct is being accused. Imagine a complaint against a company. The company is the formal respondent, but the complainant says that a named manager engaged in conduct said to breach Commonwealth discrimination law. That manager may not be the formal respondent, but the allegation is about them. It concerns their conduct, it personally affects their reputation, it may affect their employment and it may affect their professional relationships. And, depending on what follows, it may affect them for years.

Under the existing law, parliament has said that, if the commission proceeds to inquire into that complaint, a person who is the subject of an adverse allegation is ordinarily to be notified, as they should be. That is procedural fairness. What the government is going to do with this legislation is remove that requirement of procedural fairness. Why? Well, the principal argument advanced is one of efficiency—efficiency over procedural fairness in Australia. The government says that this is part of a broader regulatory reform program designed 'to simplify the administrative processes'. The commission has estimated that administering adverse-allegation notifications consumes around 450 hours each year and includes identifying relevant people, considering redactions, obtaining contact details and preparing correspondence. Since when did 450 staff hours per year become too high a price for procedural fairness, for a human rights commission with well over 100 staff? Across government, we impose notification obligations all the time. We require notice before adverse decisions. We require opportunities to respond. We require procedural steps that take public servants time—God forbid! We do so because, while efficient government is important, fair government—procedural fairness—is even more important.

A person can suffer serious consequences from an allegation, even if they are not formally sued. That is exactly what the 2017 explanatory memorandum recognised when it referred to reputational harm. And we should remember what kinds of allegations we were discussing. The existing definition is not triggered because someone has been mentioned casually in correspondence; it concerns an allegation that a person has engaged in conduct amounting to unlawful discrimination. If our law rightly treats those allegations seriously when protecting complainants, then our procedures should also treat them seriously when determining how the accused person is dealt with.

Early notification can actually improve the quality of the commission's work. Someone who knows that an allegation has been made can preserve documents. They can retrieve emails. They can identify witnesses. They can explain a conversation whilst memories are fresh. They can point out a factual error. They can provide context that an organisational respondent may not possess. They can, in some cases, acknowledge what occurred and help resolve a dispute. And, sometimes, their response may actually demonstrate that the allegation is mistaken. All of those possibilities contribute to better fact finding and better conciliation. The Australian Human Rights Commission should actually set a high standard for procedural fairness. It should not be enough to say, 'You were technically the respondent, so we did not have to tell you that this serious allegation was being considered.' That is not the standard that Australians expect from government.

There is, of course, an important qualification to the current law. There will be cases involving sexual harassment, domestic violence, vulnerable complainants or other circumstances in which immediate notification could create genuine risks. The former coalition government recognised this in 2017 and created an exemption where notification would prejudice a person's safety. The explanatory memorandum specifically contemplated that that might arise, for example, in sexual harassment matters. So we already have a law that recognises exceptional circumstances.

So what is the Albanese government doing with the so-called innocuous part of this bill? The Albanese government has taken a scalpel to a problem and reached for an axe. It means removing a person's statutory right to be told that they have been accused of unlawful discrimination in a complaint being considered by the Human Rights Commission. That deserves more scrutiny than the language of regulatory efficiency suggests. A fair process protects complainants as well as respondents and third parties, because decisions and settlements reached through processes perceived as legitimate are more durable and command greater respect. The history of the QUT matter should have taught parliament that notification is not an administrative nicety; it is one of the foundations of procedural fairness, and that foundation will be thrown out when this bill passes the Senate.

The 2017 parliament understood the potential reputational harm faced by a person who is the subject of serious allegation, even though they are not formally a respondent. It concluded that those people should know allegations have been made and should have an opportunity to challenge them. The principle remains correct today, and the coalition will be moving an amendment to take this out of the bill.

I would ask—if you haven't read the bill, read it. Read this part. If you vote for it, you will be voting to remove procedural fairness from a person who has been named in a discrimination complaint. It's happened before. It had disastrous consequences. We legislated to rectify that to ensure that procedural fairness was afforded to people who are named in complaints. When a person's reputation is on the line, 450 hours of bureaucratic staff time across an entire year is, quite frankly, not too much for the Commonwealth to spend ensuring that people know what they have been accused of.

As I've said, the coalition will move an amendment to ensure that this does not go through the Senate. We stand for procedural fairness. Shame on the Albanese government for ripping the guts out of procedural fairness in the Australian Human Rights Commission Act with the bill that they seek to put through the Australian Senate.

I'd like to thank senators for their contributions to debate on the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026. Every Australian and every business deals with regulation on a daily basis. They deal with it when they start a business, when they stock a product on the shelf, when they access a critical service for a vulnerable relative and when they drive to work. Building better regulation is a national ambition, and I want to acknowledge and thank those senators who have constructively engaged with the government on this bill.

Our goal for regulatory reform has been to build better regulation. Better regulation is not simply about counting whether there are fewer or more regulations than yesterday. Indeed, inflexible or ideological targets can do as much harm as good when it comes to ensuring regulation is fit for purpose. Better regulation is about what regulation is needed to protect consumers to efficiently deliver care and service to Australians who need them and to allow businesses to do what they need to do at the lowest regulatory cost. This is what the government's regulatory reform agenda will achieve when fully implemented.

It will cut the regulatory burden by $10 billion a year, giving the economy the space it needs to invest, hire and grow. It will make it easier to do business across different Australian jurisdictions. It will continue to progress a 'tell us once' approach to interacting with government, meaning businesses and Australians don't need to tell their story over and over to get things done. It will deliver better regulation.

To sum up, this bill includes 22 measures that amend 26 acts, appeal two acts and affect the operations of 19 government agencies. It will simplify regulation, particularly for business. This bill will implement important updates to intellectual property legislation and add valuable flexibility to the trade remedies process for importers. It will progress important changes to support gender equality in our workplaces by simplifying workplace gender equality reporting and target-setting requirements to ensure more thoughtful gender equality targets set by employers with a lower regulatory burden. This bill will give former ADF members more choice to manage their money in retirement. It will also make various technical amendments to improve the operation of existing regulations and repeal legislation that has become redundant.

I'd like to speak in more detail on the government's amendment in this place to improve the administrative working of the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort. This measure reduces the disallowance period for CSLR special levy determinations, which are made when there is a shortfall after collection of the legislated annual levy from 15 sitting days to five sitting days. The CSLR exists to support Australians who have nowhere else to turn to, to get recourse for losses they have suffered due to financial misconduct, and the special levy is a safety net for when the set annual levy isn't enough to meet all compensation obligations. However, ASIC is not able to collect the funds raised under this special levy until the disallowance period has expired. Fifteen sitting days is a long time on the calendar, and it is a long time to make vulnerable victims of financial misconduct, such as retirees or those facing serious illness, wait to get their much needed compensation. In practice, the time taken between the CSLR operator notifying the minister of a shortfall and the funds being made available to eligible victims can average more than eight months.

The government's amendment removes a delay in an already lengthy process and replaces it with one that is fit for purpose. Parliament will retain oversight on determinations and will be able to disallow them if it deems it appropriate to do so. The levy will not take effect until the disallowance period has passed. Finally, this change will align the CSLR levy timeframes with those that are already applied to ASIC's industry funding levies.

I'll briefly speak on the non-government amendments proposed for this bill. I want to reiterate that the amendments made by schedule 2 part 4 will not reduce procedural fairness in the Australian Human Rights Commission investigation of a complaint. These amendments will make the complaints process a more effective and streamlined process for everyone involved. I also want to be clear that the government will not be supporting amendments to change the treatment of limited recourse borrowing arrangements for superannuation funds. The amendments would roll back changes intended to protect people's savings that the Senate debated and voted on on 25 June 2026. Nothing has happened in the last 2½ months to justify considering this issue again. Finally, at this time, the government will not be supporting the amendments moved by the Greens to include foreign military membership as a matter that must be declared on incoming passenger cards. The nature of these cards may not give an accurate picture of this information in cases where it is needed most. Furthermore, the likely cost required to update Border Force systems to read the new information is not proportionate to any perceived benefit of this change.

In conclusion, this bill is only one small part of the government's delivery of its regulatory reform agenda. I expect that regulatory reforms omnibus bills will continue to be developed and introduced as the government identifies and develops more positive regulatory changes. I look forward to further collaborative engagement with my senatorial colleagues when our next bill arrives.

The question now is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Smith be agreed to. A division being called and as per arrangements within the Senate, we'll deal with that tomorrow.