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

I wonder if any of those on the other side of the House could answer the following question: between this government's red-tape repeal day No. 1 and red-tape repeal day No. 2, how many new regulations did this government pass into law? The answer is 690. While they were crowing about a bonfire of regulations, this government was passing an average of three to four regulations every day. So much for their hatred of regulation—even on the weekends, they did not stop. No weekend day went by that they did not manage to churn out an average of three or four regulations. That, frankly, speaks to the stunt that red-tape repeal day is.

Good governments are always about cleaning up the statute books, making them as straightforward as possible and getting rid of typos. Good governments do not crow about a red-tape repeal day—it is like having a special 'I came to work and had a cup of tea' day. The minister at the table is saying, 'Now there is an idea.' Perhaps that is what we will see from red-tape repeal day No. 3.

When Labor was in government we repealed over 16,000 redundant acts, regulations and legislative instruments. We changed thousands of pieces of bad punctuation and typographical errors in the statutes, but we did not feel the need to publicly pat ourselves on the back for that. We thought that was merely the engine room work of government. This is a government, though, that thinks that it ought to be particularly proud of its 39 individual amendments, changing the term 'electronic mail' to 'email'; of its several hundred amendments adjusting spelling, grammar and punctuation; and of the repeal of such noted business obstacles as the Dried Fruit Export Charges Act 1927, the Nitrous Fertiliser Subsidy Act 1969 and the Lighthouses Act 1949. Indeed, the way they keep on going we can expect a headland speech from this government on the repeal of the 1949 Lighthouses Act.

The inane nature of so many of these amendments explains why the government, in the case of its first red-tape repeal day exercise, did not bother to bring forward the Omnibus Repeal Bill to the Senate until a few weeks before the second red-tape repeal day. These are hardly the actions of a government which is champing at the bit to reduce regulatory burden for Australians.

As Senator Ludwig has recently discovered, red-tape repeal stunts under this government are not free. Across agencies the government has set up teams to hunt out typographical errors, to root out the term 'electronic mail' wherever it might exist, to abolish regulations which are troubling no-one. The cost of that exercise in the case of Treasury is $2.1 million a year, while the industry and social security departments are costing around $700,000. This bonfire of the regulations is in fact a bonfire of the vanities, and Australians are paying the cost. Australians are paying millions of dollars for this government's war on bad punctuation.

When the government is not getting rid of trivial typographical errors, it is using its red-tape repeal stunts as a way of hiding measures which hurt ordinary Australians. So red-tape repeal day No. 1 involved attempting to gut Labor's Future of Financial Advice consumer protection reforms—reforms put in place in the wake of the devastating collapses of Storm Financial and Trio in order to prevent Australians from losing their life savings. You could tell who benefited and who lost from this by the shiny shoes lining up to defend the government while organisations like Choice and National Seniors were saying that taking away consumer protections on financial advice would be a bad idea. The Australian people managed to see off the attempt to gut consumer protections and to remove those financial advice protections. I pay tribute to those brave senators who stood up to knock off the government's removal of consumer protections.

The government is also using its red-tape repeal stunt as a way of killing off the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission. The commission is one of those rare regulators that receive strong support from the sector it regulates. Four out of five Australian charities supported the charities commission before this government came to office and—after a year of campaigning in which minister Andrews with his forceful advocacy hit every TV and radio station in the country to argue for the repeal of the charities commission—after that ferocious PR campaign from one of the government's most charismatic ministers, what share of Australian charities do you think still supports the commission? Deputy Speaker, I am afraid it is still four in five; and it is only about one in 20 who supports the government's plan to give charities regulation back to the tax office.

Why would you take charities regulation from a bespoke agency, which is handling it well at an economical cost, and give it to the tax office, which is not well set up to monitor charities? The charities commission is good for charities, transparency and Australians wanting to protect themselves against door-to-door scammers. You can go to www.acnc.gov.au to simply check whether a charity is legitimate or whether the person at your door is trying to line their own pocket.

The real problem with red-tape repeal day is that its reforms are either trivial or take Australia backwards. As the member for Reid has noted of schedule 4 to this bill, it is indeed 'bizarre': unifying the definition of Australia for tax purposes does not seem to be a measure which governments ought to be patting themselves on the back about. Schedule 2 makes mechanical uncontroversial amendments to the Taxation Administration Act 1953 to consolidate duplicated provisions, repeal redundant laws and move longstanding regulations into primary law. That is all unobjectionable stuff, while the measures relating to superannuation are supported by this side of the House—naturally, because Labor has the great superannuation legacy of which we are enormously proud.

This is a government which needs to the focus less on trivia and more on substance; less on unfair measures and more on fair measures that are in the interests of all Australians. We need to know what the future of the $7 GP co-payment is—whether it has been trashed or whether it has just been moved to the witness protection program, whether the government still intends to sneak it in or whether it is indeed an ex-parrot.

This is a government that has gone from bad to worse. It is a government that does not just have barnacles on the ship but has a fundamentally rotten hull. This government needs to focus on the Australian values of fairness and egalitarianism rather than governing for the very few at the expense of the many.

Debate adjourned.

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