Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the House for his question. In his question is an important point, which is that we need to get the balance right on regulation. We need to ensure, as the Leader of the House well knows, that we have the right air safety regulations. So it is not about simple-minded stunts of the number of regulations passed or repealed; this bill is a straightforward bill, which will be supported by the Labor Party.

It does a set of things which, frankly, no-one could object to. Removing the hyphen from 'e-mail'—that is a good thing, frankly, but I do not think it deserves a press conference by the Prime Minister. Changing the words 'facsimile transmission' to 'fax' is, again, a measure which probably did not require a press conference of the Prime Minister. Indeed, in other bills, changing 'electronic facsimile to a facsimile' to the words 'fax to a fax' probably did not require grandstanding by the government. In other contexts, correcting the spelling of the word 'committing' probably did not require grandstanding by the government. Changing the word 'trademarks' to two words, 'trade marks', is again something which members of this side of the House will not be objecting to, but let us not claim it as a nation-changing event. Changing 'Legislative Assembly for the Northern Territory' to 'Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory' is doubtless the correct way of addressing the legislative assembly in the Northern Territory, but it is not a measure which is going to make business or the community better off.

As the second reading amendment makes clear, the former Labor government had a strong record of deregulation and reform and of removing unnecessary acts from the statute books. We repealed 16,794 acts, regulations and legislative instruments during our time in government. We put in place seamless national economy reforms—real deregulation that lowered business costs, according to the Productivity Commission, by $4 billion a year, with full reforms to increase productivity by $6 billion per year.

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