Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2015) Bill 2015 and related bills. When I was running Pickles Auctions in Townsville, the toughest job was always that of the transport officer. You had to organise all sorts of things from all over the country. You had to organise cars to be shifted all over the country. You did not know whether they had wheels or whether they had accident damage; you did not know anything—and we just expected that they would turn up on time, every time. When they did, nothing happened. No-one rang up and said, 'Thank you very much. My car is here. It's out in my yard.' No-one said thank you at all. But when it did not, that was a problem.

We have just heard the member for Greenway highlight just what has to happen in relation to red tape. The parliamentary secretary in charge of this, the member for Pearce, who is sitting at the table, is inundated with ideas about how we can reduce red tape. In our first year, when we said we would come to parliament and remove a billion dollars' worth of red tape per year, we removed over 50,000 pages of legislation. We removed over 75,000 rules and regulations. We saved the economy over $2 billion. And who noticed? Absolutely no-one. That shows the size of the task we have to deal with—how much rules and regulations play a crippling role in our economy and our society.

When we first made the announcement that we would be removing red tape, I said to the then parliamentary secretary, the member for Kooyong, 'Sooner or later, you know, we're going to have to get a bloody nose out of this. We're going to have to pick a fight with the states, because there would be nothing worse than if, say, when we repealed the carbon tax we left that area open so that state governments, through their power suppliers and pricing arrangements, were able creep in that bit extra.' The federal government has saved the federal taxpayer an absolute motza of money—a huge amount of money—by repealing the carbon tax. But we get what happened with Ergon, where they were able to change the tariff arrangements around, raise the service fee and add another thing in there, and suddenly the number in everyone's power bill did not seem to change much in Townsville.

We have done the right thing here, all the way through. We have taken the thing all the way through. But sooner or later we are going to have to make sure that we take on the states and local governments. I know it is easy to pick on the states but here I reckon there is just cause. My friends who are in local government say the problem they have is that state governments are shifting burdens of responsibility onto local governments but not giving them any remuneration or financial support to do these tasks that the state government is shifting—costs and burdens.

I suppose it gets down to the question of why we do it. We do it because the Australian people want us to do it. Every time we make a change we are leaving ourselves open to an attack by people like the member for Greenway who can only see bad things about the reduction of red tape. But every time we do these things, every time we make an effort here, it is worth it—every time we repeal a layer of red tape. Every time a business comes to us and says, 'I do not know why we're filling in this form, because it's covered over and over there. Why am I doing it?', we remove it. In some cases there may be consequences of that that we also have to fix up. But it is worth it. At every turn, reducing red tape and reducing the onerous task of filling out forms for small businesses and big businesses along the way saves them money, which gives them opportunities to employ and to give other people opportunities to grow wealth.

My parents worked in a small business. Dad started off as a stock and station agent and then we had a series of small businesses in Texas, where I grew up. We moved to Brisbane in the mid-seventies. My parents worked huge hours in the corner store and they were able to buy a house. They worked very hard for that. Most of my friends in Townsville have their own businesses either as managers of those businesses or as owners-operators.

Can I tell you the same thing that I saw with respect to my parents running a small business as I saw with every one of my friends and acquaintances in Townsville that have a small business: not one of them got into their small business because they loved filling out forms. Not one of them got into business because they loved filling out paperwork for government agencies and departments. Whilst the member for Greenway comes in here and points a finger here and points out an article or a survey there, everything we do in this space is valuable. We as a parliament should never underestimate the value of what we do in removing red tape and telling people that we are going to do it. The problem that we have, moreover, than anything else is that people come to us and say, 'It's pointless because there will always be red tape.' I go to their business and they show you the form. I say, 'Send it to me, so I can put it in front of the parliamentary secretary so that we can get this thing fixed.' Of course, they don't because they do not believe that any government is on their side, be it state, federal or local government.

They all believe that where there are massive bureaucracies, they are just there to make more rules and regulations. When Tony Abbott, then Leader of the Opposition, and today Prime Minister, came out with these announcements, 'We'll be removing $1 billion worth of red tape per year, every year,' you would have had to think to yourself, 'How can we do this forever.' As we said, we removed $2 billion worth of red tape and no-one noticed. That shows you the pile that we have to work with.

Increasingly, we will run out of redundant legislation and easy fixes whereby we can just go through these things and we will have to get into some very tricky things that government must deal with. But I go back to one of my favourite stories when it comes to red tape.

When Treasurer Joe Hockey and his wife had their first child, they got the baby bonus. It was a non-means-tested form and Joe Hockey, the member for North Sydney, was then Minister for Human Services. He said, 'I will fill out the form myself.' He got the form and, basically, all you had to do for the baby bonus, as the parliamentary secretary has said is, 'Have a baby, have a photograph and you got the baby bonus.' So Joe wrote down the first name, husband's name, father's name, mother's name, birth certificate number—all that sort of stuff—address, then he turned the page and saw they wanted his tax file number. 'Why do you want that?' I suppose if you are getting government money, then you should have a tax file number.

They wanted to know all these other things. The form was 25 pages long. He said, 'This is ridiculous. Why are we collecting all these things?' 'But, Minister, we have to make sure all these things are in there. We have to make sure we are all doing the right things.' Joe said, 'But this is a non-means-tested form.' So they came up with a special one for him. Then they had their second child. They said, 'Minister, here is the form.' It came down to only four pages. Joe said, 'This is fantastic.' He went down to question time and got a question asked of him. He was able to tell the parliament about that. Apparently, the Public Service in his department had bodgied one just to make him happy and did not actually make a real one. But then they had to follow it through. The problem is that we still gave the baby bonus away. People still got their money. We still gave it to the right people. People are still having babies and nothing happened. We did not need the extra detail. Sometimes you have to think about these things. What do we actually need to deliver here? This is where we are going at the moment. You see the portfolios through which we have joint control between state and federal governments. It is mostly health, education and transport where all the rules and regulations are. I see the member for Cunningham down there and we were speaking about apprenticeships earlier today. The federal government is a major funder of vocational education and training. The state governments are the deliverers of the service.

We did an inquiry on this matter last year. Federal governments love universities and that is what we like to concentrate on. State governments love state schools and that is what they love to concentrate on. Basically, vocational education and training was treated like the red-headed stepchild, sitting over in the corner getting no love whatsoever.

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