Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

This bill and the amendments that the minister has just spoken about are the latest examples of the Labor government introducing grandiose schemes sounding fine with great rhetoric but in fact delivering a worse outcome than what was in place before. The minister said in his remarks that this will introduce a single national regulator. The only people who believe that are in fantasy land, because this is not going to replace other regulators. It is not even going to replace the duplication which occurs at the Commonwealth level, where various departments and authorities regulate various aspects of the not-for-profit sector. It will not do that at the Commonwealth level and it will not do it in terms of replacing the regulatory structures at agencies that exist at the state and territory level.

No state or territory has signed up to this proposal. So what started as a fine-sounding objective—to have a national regulator—ends with a completely new layer of regulatory burden and red tape placed upon the charities in Australia. Having spent a good 18 months or two years talking to people in the charitable sector right across Australia has reinforced the coalition's view that this is another unnecessary piece of regulation, bureaucracy and red tape from the Labor Party. To repeat the promise that we have made: when elected to government we will repeal this.

We have a situation here where the government is not even waiting for these bills to pass the parliament before establishing the commission. There are reports that this commission has already employed over 90 people—and this is meant to be reducing red tape and regulation. There is a whole new building in Melbourne, I believe, and people employed running around the country. Does anybody think for a moment that this is going to lead to a reduction in red tape and bureaucracy? Of course it will not. And gradually the charitable and not-for-profit sectors in Australia are coming to the realisation that what had been promised to them in terms of a reduction in their regulatory requirements is actually ending up being an increase in their burden of regulatory requirements.

We are not going to oppose these amendments because they are things which are sensible. They make a bad piece of legislation less bad than it is at the present time. But the fact that the government has to have in these amendments a provision that says that it should consult about the establishment of external conduct standards is an indication of just how ridiculous the first proposition was that came from the government. Surely a government which is concerned about the charitable sector in Australia would be consulting with that sector in the way in which it establishes standards. Why is it that we need an amendment here amongst these amendments to actually spell out that we need to have consultation with the charitable sector? That in itself gives lie to the proposition from the minister and from the government that this is establishing a single national regulator and the sun is going to shine forever upon the charitable sector in Australia. People in the charitable sector do not believe that. They come to me every day asking: what have we got? How come something that started out two or three ministers ago as a great idea to reduce red tape and regulation now ends up with another burden for them?

We will not oppose these amendments because at least they make the situation a little more bearable for the charities in Australia. But I repeat: we do not need this system. If the object is to deal with some particular problems, the government ought to be dealing with those problems. But the instinctive reaction from Labor is to create a new bureaucracy, to go to new legislation to create a whole new layer of bureaucrats to regulate this sector rather than actually deal with the issues that arise. These amendments will go through. They will improve what is a bad piece of legislation but, at the appropriate time, this legislation will be scaled back to what it should be and that is not a regulatory body; it is one that should assist the sector.

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