Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I will get back there, member for Gorton, but this is important. Those on the Labor side of the chamber claim that it is unusual for this parliament to be rushing through timely legislation but when the member for Watson was in charge of water he attempted to rush through legislation which affected hundreds of thousands of people who grow food on behalf of this nation.

If this bill's passage is delayed it will have consequences for payments continuing to be made under the provisions of the FMA Act and the CAC Act. The delay would have consequences for the amendment of 250 acts across the Commonwealth to support the implementation of the Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013 and the development of related PGPA rules and instruments.

While these amendments to enabling legislation are typically difficult to quantify in monetary terms, it is expected that simplification of these regulatory requirements will contribute to long-term efficiencies in terms of achieving improved governance, and transparency and accountability arrangements for Commonwealth entities, including non-corporate Commonwealth entities and Commonwealth entities within the Australian government.

It is important that we get this through before 1 July 2014. I look forward to seeing what the amendments will be from the other side. We heard the member for Watson complaining about gag motions. There were gag motions placed in the last parliament on what was called the clean energy legislation. We called it the carbon tax. All Australians called it the carbon tax. There were gag motions placed on Gonski.

Ms Owens interjecting—

There actually was, member for Parramatta, a gag motion on Gonski. I was lined up to talk about some of the important things in Gonski but was prevented from doing so, by a gag motion, from the then Labor government. There were gag motions placed on so many other important pieces of legislation we wanted to have a say on, when we were in opposition, but we were prevented from doing so, because Labor wanted to rush them through.

We heard the member for Watson using terms such as chaos, incompetence and broken election promises, all of which were writ large when he and his party were in government over the last six years. Chaos and incompetence. He should not come into this chamber and utter those words when we recall the sheer chaos and incompetence we had from Labor.

The other side talk about the Public Service. Our public servants do a good job; let us be honest. The member for Fraser, who has just joined us, would agree with me that the public servants of Australia do a good job. From what the member for Watson said, we would think that the only friends of public servants in this country are those on the other side.

The APS employed 167,257 staff on 30 June last year. This was 907 fewer than a year earlier. It was the biggest decline in 14 years. The federal bureaucracy, under Labor, copped its largest staff cut since the late 1990s, according to the then latest State of the service report. Labor are no friends of the Public Service.

We realise this bill before us is important. We know it was introduced by Labor in the last days of the last parliament. We heard the member for Bowman eloquently say that the changes we are making, through this legislation, were omitted by Labor's own drafters in the last parliament. It is important to remember that we are merely finishing a reform process started under Labor.

A core piece of legislation—the PGPA Act—was passed in June 2013 and is due to come into effect on1 July 2014. It has to. We were left to do the difficult work of putting meat on the bones left to us by those opposite.

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