Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The government is delivering an ambitious regulatory reform agenda.

Well-designed and targeted regulation is essential to reducing costs and complexity for business and the not-for-profit sector and forms a key part of the government’s commitment to microeconomic reform. Well-designed regulation will raise Australia’s potential economic growth rate through increasing Australia’s productivity and international competitiveness and fostering innovation and structural flexibility.

Our policy approach is both far-sighted and comprehensive. The Prime Minister, speaking as opposition leader in April 2007, set out a wide-ranging better regulation agenda to systematically reduce the level of poorly designed and ineffective regulation on Australian business. The Prime Minister committed the government to maintain rigorous regulatory impact analysis to protect business from new, unnecessary regulation as well as to reform existing regulation.

The government’s systematic approach contrasts with episodic regulatory reform efforts by previous Australian governments, which have not been sufficient to deliver continuous improvement in the quality of regulation. Since taking office, the Australian government has established an institutional and policy framework which consciously reflects the OECD’s best practice principles for regulatory quality and performance.

Advocacy for better regulation has been significantly strengthened by giving it explicit cabinet-level status. The government has strengthened regulatory impact analysis requirements by combining the efforts of the Office of Best Practice Regulation with a new deregulation policy function within the Department of Finance and Deregulation. A ‘one-in one-out’ approach to regulatory proposals has been adopted as part of a range of measures to assist in managing the regulatory stock.

Strengthened policy oversight processes are providing greater quality assurance in respect of new regulatory proposals, improving policy design and providing a capacity to more readily target inefficient regulation.

Accompanying these structural initiatives to embed better regulation practices, I am undertaking a range of regulatory reform measures that will deliver clear benefits to business and the economy.

This bill is an immediate down payment on the government’s commitment to continuously clean up red tape. It proposes to amend or repeal almost 30 acts where the provisions no longer have any function or purpose, including the Income Tax (Franking Deficit) Act 1987 and a number relating to the removal of the digital data service obligations.

In addition to this bill, the government is undertaking a wider regulation clean-up exercise, which I expect will result in about 200 pieces of unnecessary subordinate legislation being removed during 2009.

These redundant regulations were identified through a stocktake of redundant regulation undertaken by all Commonwealth departments during 2008. Such an exercise has not been done since the introduction of the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments in 2005, and indeed it does not appear to have occurred before then either.

Leaving outdated, redundant regulation on the books is not just sloppy housekeeping. It increases the costs for business by making it harder to identify which rules apply as well as increasing the probability of inconsistent or overlapping rules.

Furthermore, the government has initiated a major review of the stock of existing regulation. As announced in the 2008-09 Updated Economic and Fiscal Outlook, a review of pre-2008 subordinate legislation and other regulation is underway to document those regulations which impose net costs on business and to identify scope to improve regulatory efficiency. Around 30,000 subordinate instruments are being reviewed to identify reform priorities.

Several reform projects are already underway through ministerial partnerships. My partnership with the Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law to develop streamlined, accessible financial services product disclosure statements to replace the current lengthy and unduly complex documents has delivered a comprehensive and informative product disclosure statement for first home saver accounts, which extends to a mere four pages. We are now working on simplifying other financial services’ product documentation for both consumers and business. Further, I am working in partnership with the Minister for Health and Ageing to review existing health technology assessment processes to wipe out the unnecessary regulatory costs inherent in the existing system and to enable people to get earlier access to innovative and cost-effective new health technology.

The government has responded to the Productivity Commission’s two annual reviews of regulatory burdens on business covering the primary, manufacturing and distributive trades sectors, accepting, or accepting in principle, 68 of the commission’s 84 responses. The forthcoming Productivity Commission report on regulatory burdens faced by businesses in the social and economic infrastructure services offers further scope for regulatory improvement.

Our agenda also encompasses cross-jurisdictional regulation. Business has long indicated concerns with obstacles to competitiveness through costs generated by inconsistent and duplicative regulatory regimes across the Commonwealth, states and territories.

On 29 November 2008, the Council of Australian Governments, which facilitates interjurisdictional cooperation on matters of common policy interest, agreed to reduce costs to business by committing to reform in 27 separate areas of cross-jurisdictional regulation. The Commonwealth will provide the state and territory governments with funding of up to $550 million over five years to facilitate and reward those national regulatory reforms and deliver a seamless national economy.

The COAG Business Regulation and Competition Working Group, which I co-chair with Dr Craig Emerson, the minister assisting me on deregulation, is taking forward these reforms. Substantial progress is continuing on a number of fronts:

• reforms to the regulation of consumer credit, which will collapse the eight separate regimes run by the states and territories into a single uniform national system overseen by the Commonwealth, will come into effect on 1 January 2010;
• state and territory based regulation of trustee companies will be replaced by a national regulatory scheme—removing around 300 pages of separate and sometimes contradictory state based regulations with one, clear national regime; and
• the Standard Business Reporting initiative will enable businesses to report to a range of Australian and state and territory government agencies using a standardised reporting framework, simplifying reporting and saving Australian businesses close to $800 million per year when fully implemented.

Finally, in recognition that regulatory reform is a continuing challenge, the government requested the OECD to undertake a review of regulatory settings and policy development processes in Australia. The review will provide valuable insights to support the government’s commitment to strengthened processes for regulation making and review and better regulatory outcomes. I have asked the OECD to report its findings by December this year.

The challenge for all governments in these times of global economic stress is to maintain microeconomic reform efforts directed at enhancing productivity, competitiveness and growth potential, including through a sustained commitment to better regulation. This bill is an important step in delivering on the government’s commitment to continuous improvement in regulation.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate (on motion by Mr Billson) adjourned.

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