Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

We have seen some extraordinary events in this place over the last two days. In an act of desperation, the Liberal Party last night tore down the member for Warringah, the man who has led them through almost four years of opposition and two years of government. The Liberal Party has changed its leader and has changed its style, but we saw in question time today that this Liberal government is not going to change its policies. The new Prime Minister has not yet revealed a sliver of difference in policy substance between himself and the member for Warringah, whom he so unceremoniously deposed on Monday night. The new Prime Minister supports all of the unfair budget cuts that he voted for in 2014 and 2015. The new Prime Minister will not allow a free vote on marriage equality. The new Prime Minister supports all of this government's failed climate change policy. We stand ready to work with the new Prime Minister on these and on other issues, but first the new Prime Minister needs to show that he is ready to deliver on what Australians thought that he believed in.

Proceedings in this chamber today have an air of the surreal about them. We have heard some lofty rhetoric from the new Prime Minister, but in this place this evening we are still condemned, it seems, to trudge through more of this government's discredited policy agenda.

I will speak to two of the three cognate bills before the House this evening: the Amending Acts 1980 to 1989 Repeal Bill 2015 and the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2015. The first, the amending acts bill, repeals 870 Commonwealth acts spanning from 1980 to 1989 which amended or repealed other pieces of legislation. As these amendments or repeals have already occurred, the operation of these acts is spent. In repealing these acts, this bill will have no actual effect on the operation of any law. I repeat: this amending acts bill has not one iota of legal effect—and yet three times in this parliament the government has introduced a bill like this. They did not deal with all of the amending acts on the statute book in one go. No, they wanted to string it out. And so we are forced to traipse back here time after time to deal with these bills which, I repeat, have no legal effect.

In early 2014, as part of the Liberal government's first 'repeal day' stunt, they passed a bill dealing with amending acts passed between 1901 and 1969. But now they have slowed down the pace, now they are asking the parliament to go through this charade decade by decade. Earlier this year the parliament passed a bill dealing with amending acts between 1970 and 1979. And now the eighties are upon us. No doubt, when the government holds its next 'repeal day' stunt they will move on to the 1990s. That will certainly be a sight to see—government members railing heroically against the dead hand of Howard government regulation. Each time the government piles on speakers. Speaking to the last bill in this place, in October last year, the member for Bass actually boasted of the huge number of speakers on the government side—on a bill like this one. On that occasion the government consumed an entire parliamentary sitting day debating a bill which, by the government's own admission, has no legal effect whatsoever.

The parliament has procedures for dealing with non-urgent, non-controversial legislation. When the last bill came before this place the opposition sought to have it referred to the Federation Chamber—surely, the appropriate place—but the government refused. And so they had the House of Representatives, the highest legislative chamber in this country, spend an entire day debating the repeal of inoperative acts from decades past. It is hard to believe that we are again being asked to consume what should be scarce parliamentary time for important pieces of legislation debating bills like this. I will repeat it again: this bill has no real legal effect because when an amending act comes into force it ends another act of parliament and its work is done. The only possible effect of this bill is to remove a number of lines of titles of acts from the Commonwealth statute book—acts that no-one would ever think to refer to or need to refer to because we now have a consolidation process where all acts of parliament, after being amended, are consolidated. This is the kind of trivia, this is the kind of stunt, that this government has resorted to, pretending they have some sort of policy agenda when in fact they have none.

The second bill that I wish to speak to, the statute law revision bill, is the third of this kind of bill introduced by the Liberal government in this parliament. The parliament has passed such bills with regularity since the first of them was introduced to the House of Representatives by Sir John Latham, as Attorney-General, in 1934. I have commented in the past on the first of the Liberal government's statute law revision bills, but for the government to seek to dress up a statute law revision bill as some kind of vast act of deregulation is simply absurd. It is not in any way a matter of deregulation, it is not in any way a matter of removing red tape; it is a matter of housekeeping. These bills correct drafting errors, update cross-references and remove spent or obsolete provisions. Of course, these bills serve a worthy purpose: they maintain the tidiness of the statute book. This is an ongoing task for this and other parliaments. This is not bold regulatory reform, it is routine work undertaken by all modern governments. Among other things—and this will give all those in the chamber some idea of the importance of this bill—this bill corrects the spelling of the word 'division' in the Sex Discrimination Act, which presently lacks its third 'I'; re-letters a section of the Personal Property Securities Act, which currently contains two paragraphs 'B'; removes a misplaced quotation mark in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia Act; and corrects the spelling of 'of' in the Surveillance Devices Act, evidently a particularly typo ridden statute that was also amended by the government in both of its previous statute law revision bills. The bill inserts gender-neutral language into two acts. It makes clear in relevant legislation predating ACT and Northern Territory self-government that the legislation binds the territories. This does not change the law. The ACT and Northern Territory self-government acts already provide that acts which expressly bind each of the states also bind the territories.

All of this is worthy. Lest it be suggested by those opposite that I am perhaps saying that any of this is not worthy of action by the parliament, of course it is all worthy. But none of it is groundbreaking. And this bill, as with the amending acts bill, is not in any sense deregulation. Neither of these bills will reduce in any measurable way the regulatory burden on any Australian business. That the government would again try to dress these bills up into a grand political gesture—as it has done on previous occasions—shows this government's complete lack of substance.

On Monday afternoon, as he made his public pitch for high office, the now Prime Minister indulged in some particularly lofty rhetoric—even by his standards. He told us that what this country needed was economic leadership. When we dealt with the last iteration of these kinds of bills, in October 2014, government members told the House that they were delivering economic leadership. They told us that these bills, which by the government's own admission are of no real legal effect, represented a bold reform agenda. They said some quite extraordinary things. The member for Macquarie described the government's charade as 'an unprecedented initiative'. The member for Deakin said the government was 'taking a giant pair of scissors' to red tape. The member for Grey, most incredibly, described the passage of the last set of bills as 'an Empire Strikes Back moment'.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

I hear the member for Kooyong baying on the other side of the chamber, continuing with the pretence that there is some serious deregulation and continuing with his false and an unsubstantiated figure of the suppose savings achieved by this kind of legislation.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

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