Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the House for this opportunity to address the matters relating to this very, very important piece of legislation. I think there is a real sense of lightness coming over business; it is coming over the departments of government. There is a realisation that for too long now governments have been standing in the way of business going about doing what they do best. That is to remove compliance costs and remove duplication and to ensure that business is just freed up to service their customers, do good work, do good business, make a good profits and, more importantly, employ great Australians.

It is not just us saying that there is a lightness coming across this country but many other people outside of this place. There are people like the CEO of Westpac, Gail Kelly, who said this:

The government is showing that Australia is open for business, there is deregulation and a reduction of red tape is under way.

Tony Nicholson, the executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, said these words: 'We warmly welcome the government's red-tape reduction agenda. Streamlining our reporting and compliance requirements makes a real difference as it frees up resources to be directed towards helping disadvantaged young families.' Who would have ever thought that this very piece of legislation and the one that came before it—version 1, if I can say that—back in the autumn session would get out of the way of organisation such as the Brotherhood of St Laurence to the point where they say it actually frees up their resources to now get about the business that they are actually about. That is, helping the disadvantaged people of this great country.

I found interesting in the early stages of this debate when those opposite stood like soldiers in a row to actually mock repeal day and to mock this legislation that goes about deregulating, removing duplication and doing everything it can to get out of the road of business. They talking out of the side of their mouth with mockery about what this legislation does. They are laughing. It may be a piece of legislation that may be a little crazy, but it might have removed a quarter of a million dollars, half a million dollars or $2 million worth of compliance costs that were actually having to be paid by business across this country.

I do not see it as a laughing matter at all. I think it goes to show where the mindset of those opposite actually is when it comes to running business in this country. This government—who had six very interesting years, I must say, from 2007 to 2013—were going to be, as they were in many other areas, the messiah of deregulation and the great white hope of getting rid of the impediments to business in this country. But in a little more than 5½ years—you will not believe this—the Labor government introduced more than 21,000 additional regulations.

This is despite Kevin Rudd, Kevin 07, promising this: one regulation in and one regulation out. That was his policy then to small business, coupled together with the then Minister for Small Business, Craig Emerson. I think they lost their way. They forgot that they made a promise of one regulation in and one regulation out. They misinterpreted it. They interpreted it to be one Prime Minister in and one Prime Minister out! They lost their focus. Well, business does not want their government to lose focus and this government is not losing focus when it comes to getting out of the way of business in this country.

The Minister for Small Business, Craig Emerson—referred to by the college that spoke before me as the member for Forde—said in 2008 that Labor would take a giant pair of scissors to the red tape that is strangling small business. Again, I sadly have to make this announcement to the parliament: they lost their way, but they did not lose the scissors. The scissors did not end up cutting red cape; the scissors ended up in the back of two Prime Ministers of this country. They should have been focusing on using the scissors to get rid of the red tape that they promised they would. But they did not. As I said, 21,000 additional pieces of regulation were introduced under the previous Labor government.

As we have done on this side of the House, I could join the queue and come up with 100, 200 or 500 examples of the deregulation agenda that this government has been promoting. We started with our first repeal day back in March. We have had our second repeal day, as we promised. These repeal days will go on under the leadership of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, who is doing a great job. But his job is being made much easier by a change in culture in this place. It is a change in culture from the very top. It is a change in culture led by the Prime Minister of this country, who is a Prime Minister who says, 'This is what will define our government when it comes to small business: we are going to get the heck out of their road.' He has passed that culture onto his cabinet ministers, the outer ministry, the staffers of those ministers and the departments that those ministers lead. That is what leadership from the top is all about. It is about changing culture.

That is what this government is about. That is what we were elected to do in 2013. We were given a mandate to change the culture in this country on a wide range of fronts, whether it was getting the heck out of the way of small business, whether it was changing attitudes when it comes to the payment of social services in this country, whether it comes to the culture of higher education and whether it comes to the culture of actually getting on with investing in this country. The culture change has to be led from the front.

Those opposite can do everything they want to try to devalue this government, me as a backbencher, any of our ministers or even the Prime Minister, but what they fail to tell you is that they were not culture changers. They were just culture embracers. They were culture embracers of their own political history and their own political ideology. Where did it get us? It got us to a point where we are basically in a huge debt and deficit disaster zone.

See this speech in context