Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know why the member for Ryan is in here crowing about the Omnibus Repeal Day (Spring 2014) Bill 2014 and its related bills. I was not going to respond to her comments, but since she made some insensitive car crash analogies, I think it is appropriate to remind her about the extra $5.1 million in compliance costs for business that this government has just added with its new petrol tax arrangements. These are the small businesses—the franchisees—for whom the coalition claim to be reducing red tape. They have now imposed extra red tape on every service station in my electorate. My electorate is located in Western Sydney where, contrary to the Treasurer's understanding, we rely on cars—all of us. In some suburbs where public transport is at a premium or nonexistent, there are households with two cars in the double garage and two more on the driveway. If I were the member for Ryan, I would not come in here and crow about this bill when her government has today added to the compliance costs of hundreds of small businesses and franchisees, including those in her own electorate.

I am very pleased to continue my tradition of appearances in debates on statute stocktakes and other spent legislation repeal instruments. Back in the day, there would only ever be one or two speakers on these bills. How delightful to see that we have so many people listed to speak on these bills today. Because I am a former lawyer with a deep interest in statutory interpretation and administrative law principles, I always try to make these debates interesting and have provided some wide-ranging comments in the past. Members might like to cast their minds back to, for example, the debate on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2012, in which I recalled an Irish stocktake where they repealed thousands of pieces of legislation. Their review identified a staggering 63,000 statutes as spent legislation or statutes that should be repealed. I discussed the development of Hong Kong competition law. My gem was 'why commas matter'. There was a very interesting case from 2006, Rogers Communications v Bell Alliant, where a comma made the difference in a contract dispute worth a large amount of money. I had the opportunity to comment on High Court appointments. To my great delight, on one occasion the now Minister for Communications commented that 'such bills do not elicit great oratory' but that my contribution had been an exception. You take compliments where you can get them!

Speaking of great oratory, just to be instructive about what we are dealing with here today I want to quote not myself but someone else who has spoken on similar bills that have come before the House previously:

This stocktake bill, being the seventh since 1934, forms part of an ongoing process to clean up the statute book by repealing legislation that is simply redundant. That is all it does: repeal 84 old annual appropriations acts, as has been done for appropriation acts from 1901 to 1999 … the current stocktake bill is not a controversial bill by any stretch of the imagination; it is simply housekeeping …

While this bill is worthwhile and we support the nature of the bill and the removal of those acts from the statute law, again this is tidying up and housekeeping. This bill does not make any changes with regard to the easing of regulatory burden on business as suggested in explanatory memorandum. It can hardly be described as a feature of a meaningful deregulation agenda to remove some appropriations acts that applied over three years some 20 years ago. Things from 20 years ago are some of the things we are tidying up.

They are very true words—it was a great speech and I have taken the opportunity to read it. It was made by the member for Wright on 29 May 2013. We can apply the words of the member for Wright here today, and I thank him for bringing these thoughts to my attention on a previous occasion. He is spot on when it comes to what these housekeeping bills actually are.

I would like to focus on some of the specific elements of schedule 2 of the legislation, dealing with the communications sphere—specifically the Broadcasting Services Act and the Radiocommunications Act. I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications talk about some of these provisions and I too would like to pick up on some of them. Part 2 of the amending legislation deals with repealing certain consultation requirements before certain legislative instruments are made—removing what are called amendments relating to consultation requirements in the Broadcasting Services Act, and also the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 and the RadComms Act. I understand from the EM and from the bill itself that this is because the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 contains, in part 3, section 17, a requirement that rule makers should consult before making legislative instruments. There are related provisions dealing with circumstances where consultation may be unnecessary or inappropriate and also consequences of the failure to consult.

Whilst I understand the legislative intent is that we already have the Legislative Instruments Act which contains those provisions, and therefore there is no need for duplication in those specific communications related pieces of legislation, I want to question from a practitioner's point of view whether that is desirable. I am happy to stand corrected if this is indeed a precedent in other pieces of legislation that the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the drafters have recommended, but I did have a cursory overview about whether such repeal is commonplace and I could not see anything to support that. As I said, I am happy to stand corrected. I would have thought that one of the golden rules of statutory interpretation was that you should be able to pick up a piece of legislation and read it on its own without having to go to other instruments or other pieces of legislation to deal with very particular aspects of that specific provision. I do not see, in this proposed amendment, that there is going to be, for example, a box with a note saying, 'For consultation requirements refer to the Legislative Instruments Act, part 3, section 17.' I would have thought that, in light of our emphasis on plain English drafting, that would have been something that was desirable. It is not too hard to read a piece of legislation—and you should always, of course, have the Acts Interpretation Act next to you—but if you have to have a third act next to you, just in case, I wonder whether that will affect the way the bill is interpreted in everyday legal practice and in everyday regulatory practice, not only by the industry but by practitioners themselves. I note the comments from the government that this is not a reduction in consultation requirements but I do query how it is to be read and, seriously, whether it would be desirable for there to be a reference to consultation provisions being in the Legislative Instruments Act. To give this a bit of strength from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, I did quote them in a contribution on 28 May last year:

The Office of Parliamentary Counsel states some of the drivers of complexity in legislation and give some common examples …

Those examples include:

a tendency to respond to events with legislative changes even when legislation is not necessary to address the issues …

I do not know whether this was a specific item the industry said needed to be taken out, but the point I make is that this could end up being more complicated in practice for practitioners to deal with because all those provisions are removed from those three primary acts and now we simply have a reference—not even a reference, as far as I can see—to the Legislative Instruments Act.

The parliamentary secretary also mentioned changes to the Do Not Call Register which are part of the deregulation agenda. ACCAN's media release of today says that ACCAN welcomed indefinite registrations on the Do Not Call Register. I am sure that all my colleagues here are well aware that the issue of unsolicited telemarketing by any electronic means is by and large not welcome. OIAC research, that it appears from the release was commissioned by ACCAN, found that only two per cent of survey respondents indicated that they enjoyed receiving unsolicited marketing information. Of course they love hearing from us!

On this point I draw the House's attention to a suggestion which I think has merit and I know has been considered elsewhere by the member for Bowman, which I noted in the press recently—and that is the notion of adding small businesses to the Do Not Call Register. My electorate office has a number which obviously used to belong to a small business, because just about every day we receive calls from the same marketing company. I can see that the member for Deakin shares my pain. I would have thought that this would be a sensible measure. I mention it quite seriously to suggest that, when we do look at this particular provision, is there a reason why we cannot consider having small businesses opt in to the register if they think that is going to be of benefit to them? We are talking about productivity when we talk about reducing regulatory burdens. As everyone here I think would know, one regulatory burden and something that affects productivity is if your staff are constantly being interrupted to do things that are not productive.

Some of the substantive provisions in these amendments go to part 15 of the Broadcasting Services Act, which deals with special provisions for retransmission of programs. Part of the amendments deal with the fact—I know the member for Lingiari will be interested in this—that NITV, National Indigenous Television Ltd, is now part of the SBS family; it has been for a little while. I think the portfolio budget statement for Communications provides a very good summary:

As part of the SBS family, the National Indigenous Television service (NITV) is broadcast free-to-air with national coverage …

Isn't that a great thing, member for Lingiari?

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