Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I was listening to the parliamentary secretary, earlier, when he was talking about repeal day and I thought: why didn't we think of that? I have looked at the number of statute stocktake bills that went through the 43rd parliament. In a round figure, how many times did he speak on them? Zero! We had the Statute Stocktake Bill (No.1) 2011, the Statute Law Revision Bill 2012, the Legislative Instruments Amendment (Sunsetting) Bill 2011 and the Statute Law Revision Bill 2012—which was one of my best. Amongst other things, I would like to ask a question of the parliamentary secretary. The people who bothered to speak on this from the then opposition included the member for Goldstein. Every now and then, one of them would get up and make a contribution. I went through the contribution of the member for Goldstein actually referred to one item which he believed needed to be repealed. He said:

Mr Deputy Speaker, I will give you an example of regulation gone mad …

He said he wanted to talk about—

a secret directive to our top financial services companies requiring them to complete an 800-question audit—800 questions.

One of the questions I would like to ask is: where is the piece of legislation today in this House to repeal the item that so offended the member for Goldstein? I would like to see the member for Goldstein's wishes adhered to in this bill.

I will go onto the previous speaker, the member for Hindmarsh, who started talking about some items in telecommunications regulation. He said the standard form of agreement determination changes resulted in a number of savings. The only reason those changes could be made is that Labor enabled the Telecommunication Consumer Protections Code to be enacted under part 6 of the Telecommunications Act, which removed the requirement to have these legislative processes in place. While the current minister goes and prances around with CEOs in suits, Labor, in government, consulted with industry and consumer groups to make this happen. That is the only reason it is able to be repealed.

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