Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, we have got to get through a lot. If I could take you back to 2007, those opposite were going to be the one-in one-out administration. Twenty-one thousand new regulations later, that was a broken promise. It was not the most notable of the broken promises of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, but it was nevertheless a broken promise. They adhere to a thinking that Ronald Reagan put best: 'If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.' This approach was clearly rejected by the Australian people in September last year.

The first ever federal government repeal day will greatly benefit the smoother flow of business in my home state of Tasmania and my electorate of Lyons. Bad and redundant legislation will get government out of the lives of families and reduce the cost of living. What is it about those opposite? Both Labor and the Greens demand to have more and more control over people's lives. What sort of ideology rejects the notion of personal responsibility and seeks to stifle innovation and enterprise? The Australian Greens party, the member for Melbourne's party, was born in my home state. As I have said before, it was born of honourable and noble intent, but to listen to the member for Melbourne today advocating an ideology of control, of having a hand in every corner of people's lives, of controlling the conversation, in the belief that we know what is best for you and family—that government knows best—was truly something to behold.

The Liberal Party believes that government does not know best and that families and individuals make the best choices. We believe in personal responsibility. The more that government gets out of people's lives, the better. Regulations and boundaries are important, but not regulations that stifle entrepreneurship, that make Australia less competitive and are a burden on our nation and businesses and a cost to family budgets. This first repeal day is a worthwhile and overdue commitment to get rid of redundant and inefficient legislation. Ten thousand unnecessary and counterproductive pieces of legislation and 50,000 pages of unnecessary and costly legislation and regulations will go, removing a burden of compliance on business, community groups and households of $700 million this year, next year and every year.

Cliff Partridge runs aged-care facilities across my electorate of Lyons in Tasmania at Deloraine, at the May Shaw facility at Swansea on the east coast and South Eastern Community Care in Sorell. He will tell you how much easier life will become for his business with the government's streamlining of the pricing process for residential aged care. There has been a simplification of the proposed accommodation pricing process, and the government has increased the threshold for accommodation prices requiring approval to $550,000 from $455,000.

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