Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the members for their questions and their engagement on this important area of government expenditure. One of the things that has been raised in parliamentary debates but has also been raised outside of this building is in relation to government capacity, its contracting arrangements and what the government is doing to ensure we build up our capacity as a government but also that we draw down our capacity on outsourcing arrangements and revisit some of those relationships that we have of contractors and service providers. We got elected on a platform to bring more of the core work of the Public Service back inside the Public Service because we thought that over a decade the capacity of the Public Service had been run down, particularly in an area of core policy-making. But it was not just core policy-making; there were unacceptable levels of outsourcing and labour hire reliance, even in core areas of government service delivery such as the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Department of Defence and the Centrelink service delivery area. We have started to bring that work back in.

The PwC scandal has been an appalling shock to all of us, and Australians are rightly outraged at what has been revealed on that. In response, the Minister for Finance together with the Treasury portfolio ministers have initiated a raft of responses, some of them provided for within the budget. Within the Finance portfolio, the immediate and direct response was a request to PwC itself that any employees engaged directly or indirectly with the scandal in relation to the tax advisory matters be stood down from any Commonwealth government work. We have inserted new clauses into our contracting arrangements, which place not only a value for money but an ethics test in the contracts. It's pretty clear that an employee or a business that has been involved in the sort of abuse of information and privilege that was revealed in the PwC tax advice scandal would not be eligible for those sorts of contracts.

Thirdly, we are enhancing the capacity of the Tax Practitioners Board. An additional $30 million has been provided to build up its capacity to ensure that it can properly investigate the sort of unethical behaviour that was uncovered in the Collins matter. We are also enhancing its powers. There is a bill before the Senate at the moment. It hasn't passed through, and I urge the coalition parties to back the action that the government is taking to improve its capacity to go after unethical and rogue behaviour such as was involved in the Collins matter, to ensure that proper sanctions can be put in place in relation to that behaviour. All of this important job of work is responding not only to the over-reliance on outsourcing but to the rogue and abhorrent behaviour that was exposed in the PwC matter.

In the time remaining, I will respond to some of the questions that have been raised. The member for Barker asked what we're doing to support small business. He might have waited for the energy price relief. Over a million small businesses throughout the country will be receiving energy bill price relief. He voted against it. We voted for it. We think small businesses deserve this relief. The $20,000 instant asset write-off provisions and the Small Business Energy Incentive are, again, providing support for small businesses, together with, frankly, sound energy policy and sound workforce policy, with the training of more apprentices—something that they fell asleep on on their watch.

The member for Forde and the member for Casey asked us to spend more and tax less—to do more and to do less. They've supported every one of our spending initiatives—except for the energy price relief, I should say, and except for the very sound 60-day dispensing policy, which will save consumers and the government more and ensure that consumers are paying less for their medicines. It is extraordinary that they've decided to oppose that. I've been asked by the member for North Sydney— (Time expired)

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 13:31 to 16:00

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