Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to the business community the clear-cut cry of business across this nation is, ‘Let’s move to a point where we have a genuinely seamless national economy.’ Let’s move to a point where our businesses are not confronted with one set of state regulations after another which conflict right down the scale to the smallest things and up to the largest things, making it very difficult and very costly for a small to medium sized business that wants to operate across state boundaries. That is why, again through COAG, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, what we are trying to do is to bring about a practical program, through the minister for small business and his state counterparts, on how you make it better for business nationwide.

Right now we have 27 items of legislation before us which have conflicting state and federal arrangements which we are working our way through methodically. So, whether it is those consuming TAFE services, those consuming early childhood services, those consuming health and hospital services, the business community having to deal with their regulatory environment or those who are trying to deal with these conflicting state arrangements on emissions trading and renewable energy, it is time to fix the federation.

I would appeal to the constructive spirit of those opposite to say: what is a positive way forward to deal with these things? I remind them again that they had 12 long years in office to act in these areas. Instead, they did not prefer to come up with practical, positive solutions. Their approach was this: the best thing to do is simply blame the states because it makes for a good political outcome.

On the question of tax, the Henry commission of inquiry quite legitimately examines the entire raft of taxation, and that was contained and made explicit in the Treasurer’s statement on budget day itself. Of course, the taxation arrangements as they impact on the states will be considered in that context as well. You can do this on a comprehensive, long-term basis. And remember the call of business? They have not had a decent, all-round review of the tax system for a quarter of a century. You were in office for 12 years. What we now have is a proposal to do precisely that. Six months into our government we have a program of action on this. For 12 years those opposite sat there, dithered, did nothing—including the smiling member for Higgins, who cannot make up his mind whether he wants to be here or here or elsewhere. They had 12 years to fix these matters, even to put their shoulder to the wheel. They neglected to do so because instead they saw the politics of the blame game as better suiting their political project. We have a different approach.

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