Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Minister, you may save a few bucks for the taxpayer, but you will cost tradies, workers and taxpayers $5 billion. That's the annual cost of delaying this measure. So if you think that you are able to delay for a year and save taxpayers, say, $100 million, you've missed the fact that, of the compliance costs, $1.7 billion are in unpaid taxes. So the taxpayer will be worse off, because phoenixing will go on for another year, taxpayers will lose another $1.7 billion—PwC's own numbers, commissioned by the government—and any savings made by tying the simple director identification number project to the complicated business register project will be lost.

It's Labor that has consistently led this debate; Labor that has consistently called for action on a director identification number. We are pleased to see this bill finally before the House today—three years late—and we urge the government to move with all possible speed. We had all sorts of delays with the previous minister. Minister Kelly O'Dwyer, when she had the portfolio, was talking about using biometrics to do it, suggesting that the minister just hadn't thought through the implementation in detail. The government announced that it was going to do this at the beginning of last year, but then didn't move after the election to take action. Australian tradies, workers and taxpayers deserve better.

See this speech in context