Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this bill, but, before I doing so, I want to address a point that the member for Bendigo raised about Labor's consultations. If that was anything like their consultation for the mining tax—where there was no consultation or, where there was, it resulted in a tax that raised a couple of cents per person in Australia—then we are in a lot of trouble. But onto the important matters at hand. The government has adopted a strong deregulatory policy agenda and is progressing changes on the way in which regulation is created, implemented and reviewed. The key principles of this reform agenda include: that regulation only occur where absolutely necessary; regulation should not be the default position in public policy; and important consumer protections need to be maintained. As we know, the former Labor government simply announced sweeping media and telecommunications reforms and more regulation without consultation. Any possible changes to media or telecommunications regulation must be consultative and reflect this government's ongoing commitment to better regulation.

Let us look as the track record on better regulation so far. In our bid to boost productivity and reduce regulations, we took to the Australian people at the last election a target of a billion dollars per annum of savings in regulatory costs to industry and not-for-profits. We have far exceeded that with over $2 billion, as outlined. The communications portfolio is still fundamentally based in the mid 1990s as far as its regulatory framework goes, and that is why things need to change. The measures passed on repeal day, 1 March 2014, together with the submissions from repeal day in October last year, will generate cumulative savings of over $94 million for consumers and businesses with 3400 pages of redundant or obsolete regulations repealed. It is common ground that regulation has a cost to those entities which must comply with—good regulation balances these costs against the assessed benefits by ensuring that regulation is appropriate for its objective.

Going to some of the specific matters of this bill, one matter is the reconsideration of the need for strict compliance measures, such as requiring broadcasters to complete annual captioning reports up to 445 days after the broadcast, even though the sector has near 100 per cent compliance rate; or requiring subscription broadcasters to prepare detailed applications to temporarily exempt new channels from captioning, when a significant majority are granted on the merits in any case. It also requires ACMA to review the content classification rules and codes, when the codes are already subject to regular review. These are all examples of regulatory requirements that do not reduce safeguards for consumers but have a clear cost for broadcasters and ACMA.

The bill also removes unnecessary legislation, as I said, and reduces the burden. The amendments form part of the government's communications portfolio commitment to the Australian government's deregulation agenda. The government strongly supports all Australians having access to television services and the captioning of television services is an essential and important part of achieving this goal. The bill does not reduce captioning standards or targets. The government will not make any changes to captioning targets now or in the future. The coalition is simply seeking to reduce the regulatory burden on industry and improve the administrative arrangements associated with broadcasters captioning obligations. One particular amendment of this bill, part 9D, aims to assist viewers with a hearing impairment by requiring Australian free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television licences to meet specified levels of captioning for television programs.

I want to talk about regulation and compliance in a different way. Last Friday I hosted the Prime Minister at Deloitte in my electorate and I discussed a Deloitte report, 'Get out of your own way: Unleashing productivity' with him. The cover page of the report said:

Australia has a problem—

Mr Champion interjecting—

and Nick Champion is a part of that.

Australia has a problem and its colour is red. We need to free our economy from the stranglehold it has on Australian productivity.

Deloitte goes on to name a number of areas of regulatory burden that could be removed. It is pleasing to note that they talk about business more so than government. They make the point that the private sector imposes many rules and regulations of its own, and these carry a huge cost. They came up with a figure of $94 million to administer and comply with the public sector rules, which we are addressing, but also $155 million to administer and comply with self-imposed rules and regulations in the private sector. This affects our productivity gains, and this is why the government is so intent on reducing red tape and regulatory burdens across the board—firstly in the public sector where we can make tangible differences to improve their operations and then to encourage the private sector to take a look at their rules and regulations.

The cost of these rules is significant, as outlined. It is something that we as a community need to address from a number of angles. The Deloitte report also looks at some structural challenges on a strategic level. They have outlined this in a way that the Labor government could never have executed or implemented properly. That is the difference between the two sides: we use our private sector background and expertise to fix the problems Australia faces and we look forward to creating a strong and prosperous economy.

In closing, the changes we are outlining are required. We have made some significant achievements in this deregulation agenda, but there is more work to do. That work is incumbent on government and on the private sector to tackle unnecessary rules and regulations in our workforce and in our business operations. The better we can do that, the better our productivity can be and the better our economy can be.

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