Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

It is important for all of us to talk about red tape reduction and deregulation. What is more important than talk, though, is to actually see it through over long periods of time, which is exactly what Labor did in government. I take the opportunity to speak on this motion, because I want to set the record straight. This motion does not reflect fact or reality and it is peppered with inaccuracies. The contribution from the previous member was an unintelligible rave of a collection and series of phrases, slogans and words that any year 12 student writing an assignment would string together without any knowledge of what he is actually talking about.

Let us stick with facts and what happens in reality and what this so-called red tape reduction and deregulation the Liberals and the Nationals are going to foist on the Australian public actually is. Right at the outset I want to make it very clear that we support red tape reduction and we support deregulation. The Liberals and Nationals admit that we actually had a minister for deregulation. The fact is, according to the Parliamentary Library, while in government we repealed more than 16,000 pieces of legislation and other instruments, 7,500 of them last year. That is a record we are very proud of.

There is this furphy that does the rounds that we introduced 21,000 new pieces of something, but they do not go into the detail—sometimes they say 21,000, sometimes 22,000, they just make up the number. The reality of what those 21,000 were about, if you look at them, is that 3,400 of them were air safety certificates. I am sure if the opposite side had the chance they would have said, 'there are 3,400 pieces of red tape and regulation we do not need in Australia'. Those are air safety certificates. Another 4,200 were regulations to relax tariff concessions to make life easier for small business. Perhaps they would not have done that. But we know that what they actually did do the moment they got into government was to take away from small business $4 billion worth of direct assistance. We know that for a fact. The Prime Minister, how is beyond me, crows that getting out of the road of small business by taking money away from them makes life easier. I am sure some people could argue that is not actually the case. The fact is, and these are facts, that we did more of this in government than the other mob are dreaming about doing on their stunt day—which is all it is. The normal course of government ought to be that you turn up here and you do not make a song and dance about it every single day. It is actually your job. Getting rid of red tape and making life easier for consumers and small business is your job. It is not a stunt to turn up here every day and crow about it and make it sound as though you are doing something new and unusual that nobody has ever done in the past.

The facts are evident when you check with the Parliamentary Library, or Fact Check, or anywhere you want to check. In fact, check with big business, the mates of the Liberals and the Nationals. Check with them on their own graphs. Check what they say about regulations and who introduced the most. Surprise, surprise, it was done under the Howard government—the great bastion of regulation and red tape. They put mountains of it in place. When Labor got in office there was this peak. We had to siphon through it all to start trying to get rid of some of it. We did, and we did a good job. At the same time, as a government we faced one of the biggest economic challenges this country had seen for 75 years—a global financial crisis, not something dreamt up by small-minded Liberals and small-minded Nationals, those bastions of small business. The first thing they do as the friend of small business is to attack small business directly by taking away $4 billion, and then they smile at them and say, 'But we're your best friends.' That makes me think, 'Oh, boy, if that's what a best friend does to someone, I'd hate to see these guys if they don't like someone.'

Let us get a few things right and look at some facts. There are 21,000 pieces of legislation that supposedly we introduced and they are made up of a range of different things, including thousands of things that were repealing bits of regulation. Of course, those opposite count those in. So we will be running a ruler across them to see how much legislation they actually introduce. What Labor did was beyond this argument about red tape—this argument about bits of paper, bits of blank paper. They are talking about a bonfire of regulation—50,000 bits of paper. They may as well go down to some paper seller, grab 50,000 pieces of paper and burn them because that is about how useful it will be to ordinary people, ordinary consumers and small business. They think that somehow repealing—

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

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