Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Prime Minister. Isn’t it the case that the legislation and regulations which take effect from today consist of 1,252 pages of legislation and explanatory materials and 592 pages of regulations and supplementary materials—more than 1,800 pages in total? Does the Prime Minister agree with the view of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Minchin, who said to the HR Nicholls Society on 3 March that the unintended consequences of the legislation were ‘mind boggling’? Does the Prime Minister agree with the comment by HR Nicholls Society president, Ray Evans, that the legislation is ‘rather like going back to the old Soviet system of command and control, where every economic decision has to go back to some central authority and get ticked off’? Prime Minister, isn’t your so-called simple, single system just a complex dog’s breakfast or, as you put it, ‘strangulation by regulation’?

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