Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The issue of charities was raised earlier. The Financial Services Council estimate that charitable trusts will save more than $2 million in compliance costs with the disbandment of the ACMC; and that is obviously money that could be allocated to charitable areas; that is to say, the recipients of charity. Like all these things in the deregulatory area, the arguments against deregulation are theoretical but the effects of actually deregulating are practical and real—in this case, $2 million in trust savings.

This is a discussion that is ostensibly about Western Australia, but in 15 minutes of speech from the opposition we had no more than one sentence addressing issues relevant to Western Australia. I thought I might touch on a few issues relevant to Western Australia, just to break that small habit. Before I do that, I would like to place my speech in the context of the notion of this matter of public importance. The wording has an element of spin about it. We hear that word often. Spin is defined as 'the act or practice of attempting to manipulate the way an event is interpreted by others often in a way which is contrary to the best reasonable assessment of the quality of the act.' There are two basic types spin. The first is where you have an event which, on the best factual evidence, is a positive event and the aim of the spin is to have people interpret it negatively. The alternative is an event which, on the best factual evidence, is a negative event and the aim is to have people interpret it positively. We have an event here, which is the deregulatory agenda of the coalition government. A good example of trying to convey a negative event positively—this is a story from the internet so it must be true—is a story about a Ms Wallman, a professional genealogist. She is doing work on her own family tree when she discovers that a relative of hers was also a relative of the US congressmen Harry Reid. It turns out that the great uncle of Mr Harry Reid, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. The story says the only known photograph of Remus Reid shows him standing on the gallows in Montana Territory. On the back of the photo an inscription read:

Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.

Ms Wallman, so the story goes, corresponds with the good congressmen's office and he sends back, through his staff, a description, a biographical sketch, of his great uncle, which reads:

Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.

That is an excellent example of how an event which is largely negative can be spun to look positive. What we have before us is a proposal attempting to do the precise opposite of that—to take an event which is overwhelmingly positive for WA and try to find some kind of negativity in it, no matter how minor, imagined or pretend. In fact, what we have here is a classic example of a motion where there is a massive expanse of silver lining in the sky and Labor is trying desperately to find some kind of imagined dark cloud.

The event that we are interpreting here is yesterday's deregulation event from the coalition government—legislation and documents tabled to repeal more than 10,000 unnecessary and counterproductive pieces of legislation and regulation, and 50,000 pages of unnecessary and costly regulation. The effect will be $700 million a year in compliance cost savings. That is in one year, so the accumulation of that effect will be extremely significant—$700 million in year one, $1.4 billion by year two, $2.1 billion by year three and $2.8 billion by year four. Some of the headline features of this process are particularly beneficial for WA. The NOPSEMA reform, to have a one stop shop for compliance for offshore oil and gas, will provide massive savings of about $120 million a year recurrent Australia wide. WA represents 75 per cent of Australia's oil and condensate production and 55 per cent of our gas production and, accordingly, the share of WA's benefit of that $120 million compliance cost saving is about 80 per cent. So, in year one the compliance cost saving to the WA economy will be $96 million; it will be $192 million in year two, $288 million in year three and $384 million in year four. Yet, we have here in a discussion about WA spurious arguments about the charity sector. WA's mineral and petroleum exports represent 89 per cent of the state's total merchandise exports and 47 per cent of the nation's total merchandise exports. We are also getting rid of the mining tax as part of this deregulatory package. Here is a massive expanse of silver lining; there aren't any dark clouds. (Time expired)

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