Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Just imagine on that basis what the $158 million for the plebiscite on marriage equality could be used for, if this parliament instead did its job and got with that bit of law-making business. Just imagine: if $3,000 is celebrated—raise the rafters—what would they do with $158 million?

The total amount of claimed deregulatory savings—claimed, not actual—is less than 10 per cent of the $475-odd million in deregulatory savings that have been reported since the last so-called repeal day, which was around about this time last year, at the very best. Again, there seems to be a clear law of diminishing returns with these repeal days. Perhaps this might just be the last such day, one way or another.

The Assistant Treasurer in his second reading speech stated the necessity of there being 'dedicated parliamentary sitting days for the repeal of legislation'. Such pomposity, such pretentiousness! Since when do sitting days in this parliament need to be dedicated to doing so little? This could have been done in half an hour. The vast majority of the measures in the bills before this House are purely procedural in nature. And no-one disagrees with them. Measures that were described in the parliamentary secretary's statement—such as: the use of electronic devices in flights, which has been touched on in most contributions from government members; removing duplicative record-keeping requirements for psychologists; or the requirement that trucks have spare spray suppression devices—are not being discussed as part of this bill.

I note the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee conducted an inquiry into this momentous piece of legislation. The substance of the committee's report runs to a whopping two pages. That is this in a nutshell. Regardless of what government members say, that sums up the ambit of this bill and indeed the ambit of this government's ambition. Whatever happens in another place in this building today, this will be the mark by which this government is assessed.

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