Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a great pleasure to follow the member for Hindmarsh. He actually made an interesting point, about the Deloitte report that he referred to, that it is the private sector that is imposing many of these regulations and rules that so frustrate people. I think that is an interesting point because people tend to point the finger at government, and in fact much of the red-tape burden, if you like—which is part of modern society, I think—is actually private sector driven.

Needless to say, we support the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. It is part of the regulation repeal day, that great march against the complexity of the modern world. There is just one problem for those opposite: the previous government repealed 16,794 acts and regulations, so it is not as if there is one side of parliament that is in favour of complexity and unnecessary regulation and another side of parliament that is not. Nobody is in favour of excessive red tape. Nobody is in favour of unnecessary acts and regulations. Everybody is in favour of doing what is sensible and pragmatic. That is what we do as a nation, as a parliament. This is simply the normal course of business in this place.

But unfortunately, rather than just presenting this as the normal work of government and getting on and doing it, they have to make all this spin and hoo-ha and PR about what is entirely unremarkable. That has sadly been, I think, the mark of those opposite. We see now much division and instability in those opposite. The member for Wentworth sits there stony faced. Of course, he is up to his neck in it; we know that. And they are so focused, I think, on the salesman and not the policies, not the substance of what they are doing, that they are tying themselves up in knots. It is not good for this country, and I can tell you that many of the people I meet out in my electorate are entirely unimpressed with those opposite, who promised adult government and have given us childish games and spin, PR and the oversell.

This bill focuses on getting rid of some of those regulations that were to do with the transfer from analog television to digital television. I think everybody would regard that transfer as being a successful one. I know that in my electorate we led the way. There are a couple of suburbs in my electorate, Hillbank and Craigmore, which were in the shade of the Mount Lofty television tower. For 25 years and perhaps longer they had terrible TV reception. One of my predecessors, Martyn Evans, in the seat of Bonython—

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