Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There it is again, 'hyphens and commas'. It shows you the depth of the business understanding on the other side. We went to the election with the commitment of $1 billion a year. I want to congratulate the parliamentary secretary, the member for Kooyong, because today he announces $2.1 billion in savings. Keep it up, Josh!

This government recognises the importance of cutting red tape. Every day we are looking for ways to build a strong and prosperous economy for Australia, and we are removing the burdens. A report released overnight by Deloitte Access states that government regulations cost $27 billion a year to administer—that is us—and cost businesses $67 billion a year to comply with. That is $94 billion—for those who have not done the mental arithmetic.

We have established deregulation units across government, and each minister has been instructed to undertake portfolio audits and identify areas in his or her portfolio where overregulation is a problem. And there are many of these areas. You have heard about the 16,000 the former government took away; what they omitted to tell you about was the 21,000 pieces of new legislation in their last six-year term. That is just at a federal level, and that is on top of all the pre-existing legislation that already sits in the statute books that businesses have to deal with.

As the Prime Minister said in his speech last night to the Business Council of Australia, 'Our job is to reduce regulations so that business is busy innovating rather than lobbying.'

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