Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

That is a nonsensical intervention, showing that this government has nothing of substance to say and should not have dressed up these bills as some magnificent piece of deregulation when in fact they are nothing of the kind. This repeal of course does not change the flag. Repealing an amending act does not revive the previous version of the principal act. The operation of this amending act was spent in 1954. The Minister for Health would do well to listen to this because, instead of pretending that this is some vast piece of regulation, the government should be owning up and admitting that it is not. The Flags Act was amended in 1954, the Commonwealth Star has had the same diameter for some 60 years now and the repeal of amending acts is nothing more than a media stunt. It changes no rights and no obligations. It has no effect other than allowing the Prime Minister a glib line in his ministerial statement.

Much like our Prime Minister, this is a great big loud spectacle with not one iota of substance. This amending acts repeal bill is a mirage. There is not a single person or company in Australia subject to a regulation which this bill will remove—not one. The bill was concocted entirely so that the Prime Minister could say in his ministerial statement that he would repeal 1,000 acts. It is quite an extraordinary use of the parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. This bill must surely be one of the longest press releases in the history of Australian politics. The Prime Minister made a ministerial statement to celebrate his make-believe deregulation. He held press conferences. He launched a website. And yet, for all the brave talk of freedom, small government and cutting red tape, the Statute Law Revision Bill (No 1) and the Amending Acts 1901 to 1969 Repeal Bill will not remove a single operative piece of regulation.

This government is all tip and no iceberg. They love to speechify; they want to revive the pomp and pageantry of knights and dames. They have the gall to tell the Australian people that they are 'working for them'. They have the nerve to tell the Australian people that their repeal stunt 'is about saving you money, saving you time and trusting your common sense to make more choices about your life.' I defy the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General to explain to the parliament and to the Australian people precisely what part of their $700 million saving will come from spelling 'committing' with two Ts. I would love to see a quantification of the deadweight loss imposed on our economy by the spelling of the word 'email' with or without a hyphen. I want to hear from a single Australian shopkeeper who thinks that the biggest problem facing their small business in uncertain economic times is a misplaced comma in federal legislation.

The partisan pretence that the Liberal Party practises deregulation better than the Labor Party is just that—a pretence. We know what real deregulation is. The Abbott government will not tell you about the previous Labor government's deregulation effort. It will not tell you that the previous Labor government repealed 16,794 acts, regulations and legislative instruments during its time in office, or that the seamless national economy reforms delivered significant cost savings to business. Just 17 of these reforms were estimated by the Productivity Commission to lower business costs by $4 billion a year while the full reforms of that Labor package were estimated to increase Australia's productivity and deliver a $6 billion boost to GDP each year.

It is already clear that the business community sees through the government's repeal day stunt for the circus that it is. The Business Spectator this morning reported that the PM's bonfire of regulations had fizzled. The Spectator, a publication not known for condemning attempts at deregulation, reported:

The culling exercise does not target any specific red tape that hamstrings family business and only a handful of measures are aimed at small business.

The Prime Minister does not actually have the bottle to pursue any real, thoroughgoing reform of Australia's regulatory framework. The Prime Minister is happy to spout lots of ideological cant and deliver little substance.

Most of his repeal day is a stunt of smoke and mirrors, yet there is a darker side to the Prime Minister's repeal day showboating. Among the stunts, there are some very concerning repeals proposed by this government. Though the bills today are of no real substance, the Prime Minister does have some real cuts in the offing. For instance, the Abbott government proposes to repeal the legislation which provides for the Office of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. That office is responsible for reviewing quite onerous legislation in the national security area to ensure that the restrictions it imposes are still necessary. In a very real sense, the monitor is responsible for an ongoing kind of regulatory reform. The Abbott government cannot see the wood for the trees.

The Abbott government is also committed to the repeal of important parts of the last Labor government's Future of Financial Advice reforms. These Labor reforms are a paradigmatic example of the good to be achieved by government regulation: they corrected a market failure, protected vulnerable consumers and safeguarded the retirement savings of Australians. The Abbott government's unwinding of this reform raises once again the prospect of costly disasters like Storm Financial. We should be worried that after all of the cheap tricks of repeal day—the confected numbers and the overheated rhetoric—are long forgotten these two foolish repeals will come back to haunt us.

Repeal day might be just Mr Abbott's overindulgence in his own ideological obsessions, but it could be ordinary Australians who wake up with the hangover. So, while we will oppose the government's substantive attacks on responsible regulations like the Future of Financial Advice reforms, and while we will not let this government get away with their absurd political grandstanding, Labor will not oppose the uncontroversial bills before the House today.

As I have said, the routine housekeeping of the statute book has long been a bipartisan undertaking. I thank the Office of Parliamentary Counsel for the time and effort which goes into these statute book maintenance efforts. I regret that their hard work on the important task of maintaining the Commonwealth statute books has been so cynically exploited by a government much more interested in stunts and circuses than in substantive reform.

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