Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2022 Measures No. 4) Bill 2022. This is a bill that, like so much of what we're seeing now, does look familiar, and that is a good thing—from tax incentives to support the digital economy to reducing red tape for large and small businesses, improving integrity around superannuation, supporting small and medium-sized businesses to digitise and train their staff. The majority of the content of the bill—and, I stress, the majority—contains that pro-growth, pro-small to medium-sized business agenda that typifies our approach to the economy, and we very strongly support it.

I join with the Assistant Treasurer in his comments about the consumer data right and comments we just heard on the previous bill. These are good measures. These are pro-growth measures. These are measures that we can work with the government on. They are going to strengthen the economy, strengthen the power of consumers to be the best regulators in that economy. This is exactly the sort of initiative we do want to see from this government, and when we see it we will absolutely support it. We'd like to see more of it, not less. However, I have to say that, at the same time, we have seen disappointing initiatives from this government in this area of growing the economy, strengthening small to medium-size businesses and strengthening Australia in the process. We have seen tens of millions to the Public Service—money that we don't think is appropriate for up to 20,000 new public servants—and $6.1 million in grants to the CFMMEU to audit our textile industry. I really don't think the CFMMEU has any qualifications to audit our wonderful textile industry and the enormously important role that it plays, which my family has been involved with for many generations. This is one for the CFMMEU. There is tens of millions to develop and enforce workplace laws that will mean that any small to medium-size business above 20 employees will be subject to industrywide bargaining and strikes. That's not what we need.

We very much support initiatives such as the Digital Games Tax Offset, the Technology Investment Boost, the Skills and Training Boost and the initiatives to reduce red tape. We do have deep reservations about other parts of this bill.

It's important to note that this bill could have sailed through this parliament with bipartisan support. Traditionally, that is what you would see with Treasury laws amendment bills. These bills are intended to be noncontroversial measures that are bundled together that both sides of this chamber can work together on and support in the way that I have described: with bipartisan spirit. Instead, at exactly the time when we should be delivering certainty to business, the government has stapled into this bill a number of politically contentious measures, and that is outside what we have normally seen in this place with these sorts of bills. It's created logistical challenges for the government, but that is as it should be if they are going to take this sort of approach.

There's billions in spending here for transmission projects that have not been recommended by AEMO, the energy market operator, and that means there's money there—a big slush fund—for projects about which we don't know whether they will deliver a cost benefit. We don't know whether they're going to be good for consumers. We don't know whether they're going to be good for local communities that the transmission lines go through. We don't know that they're going to bring down the price of electricity at exactly the time when we do need the sort of projects that AEMO in the past has recommended that will bring down the price of electricity and make consumers better off.

On top of the billions in spending for transmission projects, within this bill is a hidden billion-dollar fund for the Department of Climate Change, Energy and Water to circumvent the independent CEFC process. That's a process we always respected in government. I strongly supported the role of the CEFC in deploying technologies and getting emerging technologies out in the marketplace, making them bankable, ensuring that there was finance there at the very-high-risk part of technology development life cycle. That is a good thing for the CEFC to do. I strongly support that, and we strongly supported that as a government. To have a hidden billion-dollar fund which is circumventing those processes that we honoured is not the right way to go. On top of that, we see within this bill—which, again, as an omnibus bill would traditionally be noncontroversial—$500 million of coalition energy commitments that they previously opposed, which is pretty extraordinary in its own right.

Worse than that is that buried deep in schedule 8 is a change to remove the safeguards around spending through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This means in practice that Minister Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, will be able to sneak in changes without consulting the parliament. That's what he wants to be able to do. Hidden in the explanatory memorandum is the revelation that the minister and the department will have this billion-dollar fund to fund whatever they want without being accountable to this place. Businesses will pay the price for this. At a time when businesses need certainty and when we want to see—and those opposite have consistently promised—transparent and accountable parliamentary processes, to sneak in a change like that and use the CFC in this way is extraordinarily disappointing. We will be watching very closely how this money is used. To the extent that we can get any sense of transparency through estimates and other processes we can use, we will be holding the government to account, if this bill is successful.

Whilst we don't want to delay, and we won't delay, the bill's passage through this House, we will use the Senate to scrutinise these extraordinary powers that the government is sneaking through. I say to the government: if, in the future, the government wants swift passage of these omnibus bills through this place, it must ensure that within those bills are non-controversial items, which are bipartisan and which we can work together on. There is no shortage of areas where we are prepared to do that. We are willing to do that and we are enthusiastic about doing that. Just hearing the Assistant Treasurer talking about the Consumer Data Right tells me that there is lots to work on together. That's where these sorts of bills have a role. But to insert controversial items in them—bury them deep in them—in an attempt to sneak them through is not something that is going to be helpful to anybody in the future.

With that, I move the amendment circulated in my name:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes:

(1) the vast majority of the initiatives in this bill are Coalition policies that cut red tape, support small business, and drive productivity by supporting businesses and individuals to train, innovate, and create;

(2) the Government failed to deliver similar initiatives in their own Budget in October;

(3) the Government have found time to pursue a range of pet causes in their first six months of office instead of legislating these measures earlier;

(4) that at the same time the Government should be delivering certainty to businesses, the Government have stapled a number of politically contentious measures into Schedule 8 of this Bill including:

(a) transmission projects that have not been recommended by the energy operator;

(b) a hidden $1 billion fund for the Minister for Climate Change and Energy to circumvent the independent Clean Energy Finance Corporation process; and

(c) legislative changes that remove guardrails on spending through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation; and

(5) that despite six months in office, the Government have failed to unveil a plan to support capacity in our energy market and broken their election promise to bring down power prices".

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