Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the motion relating to deregulation in the terms in which it appears in the Notice Paper:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) that in April 2007, the previous government promised to lift Australia's productivity performance by implementing a 'one regulation in, one regulation out' policy, but instead, between 2007 and 2013 it added over 21,000 new regulations and repealed 105;

(b) the findings of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's 2012 National Red Tape Survey which showed that:

  (i) 44 per cent of businesses spend between one and five hours a week complying with government (federal, state or local) regulatory requirements (filling out forms, applying for permits, reporting business activity);

  (ii) 72 per cent of businesses say the time they are spending on red tape has increased in the last two years; and

  (iii) 54.3 per cent say that complying with government regulations has prevented them from making changes to grow or expand their business; and

(c) that in 2013, Australia was ranked 128 out of 148 nations on the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index in terms of its regulatory burden;

(2) recognises:

(a) the need for significant deregulation and the removal of burdensome red and green tape to allow businesses in the Australian economy to grow;

(b) that the Government has a plan to cut regulation across all areas of government, including on the Parliament's first repeal day scheduled for 26 March 2014;

(c) that the House Standing Committee on the Environment is currently inquiring into the impact of 'green tape' and issues related to environmental regulation and deregulation; and

(d) that identifying other obsolete and outdated legislative instruments and removing them from the statute books will reduce the regulatory burden on the Australian economy; and

(3) commends the Government for undertaking this approach to deregulation to boost productivity in the Australian economy.

I rise today with great pleasure to note and move this motion in relation to the government's deregulation agenda—an agenda I believe is probably the single most important deregulation agenda taken at federal level in the history of the Commonwealth. It comes on the back of a government that benchmarked its success by passing laws—that is, that the volume of laws somehow had some significance to its effectiveness, which of course we know to be a complete furphy.

It is actually a shameful record that in 5½ years Labor introduced more than 975 new or amending pieces of legislation and more than 21,000 additional regulations. It speaks to a government out of control and which says that every response of government must first be a legislative response. If there is a problem, we must legislate. If there is a challenge that is faced by business or the community, we must alter a regulation, amend an act, put more paper into parliament, and that will somehow fix our problems. But of course that is not the best way to govern a society, and the fact that the Commonwealth has accumulated so much unnecessary regulation over so many years speaks to a need for urgent deregulation.

This is not just the government's view. It is also the view of the not-for-profit sector and the major business sector, and importantly, of the small and medium enterprises around our country—the many millions of small and medium businesses that struggle to compete against bigger business, that struggle to create, innovate and do the job of powering the economy day in and day out. So the first point of this motion is to note that the government has a strong deregulation agenda, and I want to commend the Prime Minister for his determination to see deregulation at the forefront of government. I also want to commend my friend the parliamentary secretary responsible for deregulation, Josh Frydenberg—a man of vision and great leadership—who is driving this agenda. And I think that as the member for Grayndler walks out it is important to note that every time he would get up in the last government and say, 'We have achieved success; we have passed hundreds of bills; today it is now 200'—or 300 or 400—it would send a chill down the spine of most Australians, because what we do not need is simply more laws; what we do not need is simply more regulation.

Labor likes to have its little red books. Well, the parliamentary secretary responsible for deregulation has produced a little red book of red tape reduction, which I can highly recommend to all members. This little red book of red tape reduction is perhaps one of the most important documents we have seen in Commonwealth history. It acknowledges that as a society we have gone too far in over-regulating and in making large, small and medium business comply with processes not once—and sometimes not even just twice—but multiple times, for the same effect and for no purpose other than regulation—no outcome that is different from any different layer of government, and not just simply a function of our federalist system but also a product of multiple acts in the same area, multiple triggers requiring different processes for the same outcome.

This is a process that has to come to an end. That would bring great productivity improvements for our country. It would give people the capacity to spend more time working for themselves in their business, not just the government, which would enable people to produce and make more money in their business That would mean more opportunities for jobs, growth, investment and prosperity for Australians. It is the government's fundamental agenda to ensure that the economy is rebooted, and there is no better way to start than with getting our own house in order—and that is government and this parliament. That is why this motion today is so important. It notes that Australian commerce and industry put out a great red tape survey in 2012, which had horrific, damning statistics in it. These showed that 44 per cent of businesses spend between one and five hours per week complying with federal, state or local government regulatory requirements—just filling out forms, applying for permits, reporting business activity. Yet 72 per cent of businesses said the time they are spending on red tape has increased in the past two years; 54.3 per cent say that complying with government regulations has prevented them from making changes to grow or expand their business.

And then there was the damning rating Australia received in competitiveness—128 out of 148 in terms of our regulatory burden. That is 128th in the world. It is not a hallmark of a competitive economy, and in the modern era we must be able to compete. We cannot compete on many of our cost structures, but we should be a competitive jurisdiction internationally in relation to our regulatory burdens. We know that major projects can fail if they are not timely. We know delay can be fatal to hundreds of billions of dollars of investments. We have seen, for example in South Australia—and I note the sad return of a Labor government there—that we lost a critical project, and I would cite delay as one of the key reasons that project never came through. Delay can be fatal to a major project. Delay is the No. 1 reason that cost structures go up in a major project and can cause those things to fail. We have to be competitive internationally.

That is why it is great to see a government that is prepared to go forward and reduce red tape in such a substantial way. We have seen the previous government's approach, and I think it was Chassidus who said, 'The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government'. He had something back then, but of course he could not have envisaged a complex and modern society like we have today. And he was not just referring to volume: the more corrupt the government, the more numerous the laws. Every response was legislative in the past government.

I have Labor members looking at me in a bemused fashion. They do not know what I am talking about. They think a new law is the answer to everything; they think a new regulation will solve every problem. It will not. We have heard a chorus of strange reactions from the Labor to this: 'This was actually our idea'. Well, I can attest that the previous government had several ministers for deregulation, and you could not identify what any of them had been doing. We know the facts. We know it was 975 new or amending pieces of legislation, 21,000 additional regulations and the repeal of only a few hundred. So it certainly was not their idea. If it was their idea, they never implemented it—another great Labor idea never implemented. It certainly would never have happened under a Labor government. They simply do not understand the weight of burden on a small business and a medium enterprise that is struggling to compete but has to work for the government. Time spent working for the government is not time well used for a small business; it is dead time. That is why I am very pleased to have my friend and colleague the member for Reid following me. He has commercial experience and has run businesses. He understands how much time is taken up working for the government when it could be better placed in the business, when it could be better placed growing and expanding, and when it could be better placed employing.

We have reached a necessary junction in our history: we need to deregulate. We need to have less regulation and more efficient regulation, and that is also the driver—not just to remove pieces of redundant legislation, which we are doing in up to 10,000 cases, but to go through those existing regulations and say that we can reduce the cost structures of so many of these. If you go through the material that the Parliamentary Secretary for Deregulation has provided, and I recommend it to members, especially those opposite, you will find each individual measure by portfolio and the specific reductions in cost-structures for business that come from this deregulation. This is real, it is quantifiable and it will mean a great boost to our productivity and competitiveness.

The cost-structures amount to the staggering sum of almost $700 million. If you really want to get business moving, if you really want growth and if you really want jobs to be created, you have to work with business to ensure they are able to grow and employ. Each of these specific measures—there are too many to read today, and I am pleased there are too many to read today, because there are over 80 here—is a winner in terms of deregulation cost.

Members opposite want to take objection to one or two of them. Even in relation to the Future of Financial Advice, when you had serious criminality and evidence of a criminal matter their first instinct was to treat the whole sector like criminals. Their first instinct is to say this is a problem with everybody, that commissions lead to criminality, which is very collectivist Labor thinking. It is not the case that because you take a commission you are somehow a criminal, or that somehow your behaviour is led down the line of becoming a criminal. You are blind to the cost structures of these industries and sectors and the complexities of how they work. It is not an adequate response to simply say, 'We are changing the law across the whole board, because everybody that might be involved in taking a commission is therefore somehow motivated to be a criminal.' That is not correct. We should address the criminality, we should address the details of what went wrong, but we should not necessarily baulk at removing this burden on so many financial advisers. We need to ensure that people have the flexibility needed in their business to compete.

I will finish by commending this motion to the House. It is a very important motion, probably one of the most important we have seen in many years. It is on the back of the Prime Minister's determination to make this a government that is about getting the shackles off business and off the not-for-profit sector to allow them to be productive parts of our society. We have come to an era in government and our society where government is too pervasive, involved in too many things, passing too many laws, and trying to do too much for too many people. We need to wind it back, we need to make sure our businesses can grow, compete, employ, and do the jobs they are supposed to do. The number one way we can do that is by deregulation in government.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I reserve my right to speak.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is important for all of us to talk about red tape reduction and deregulation. What is more important than talk, though, is to actually see it through over long periods of time, which is exactly what Labor did in government. I take the opportunity to speak on this motion, because I want to set the record straight. This motion does not reflect fact or reality and it is peppered with inaccuracies. The contribution from the previous member was an unintelligible rave of a collection and series of phrases, slogans and words that any year 12 student writing an assignment would string together without any knowledge of what he is actually talking about.

Let us stick with facts and what happens in reality and what this so-called red tape reduction and deregulation the Liberals and the Nationals are going to foist on the Australian public actually is. Right at the outset I want to make it very clear that we support red tape reduction and we support deregulation. The Liberals and Nationals admit that we actually had a minister for deregulation. The fact is, according to the Parliamentary Library, while in government we repealed more than 16,000 pieces of legislation and other instruments, 7,500 of them last year. That is a record we are very proud of.

There is this furphy that does the rounds that we introduced 21,000 new pieces of something, but they do not go into the detail—sometimes they say 21,000, sometimes 22,000, they just make up the number. The reality of what those 21,000 were about, if you look at them, is that 3,400 of them were air safety certificates. I am sure if the opposite side had the chance they would have said, 'there are 3,400 pieces of red tape and regulation we do not need in Australia'. Those are air safety certificates. Another 4,200 were regulations to relax tariff concessions to make life easier for small business. Perhaps they would not have done that. But we know that what they actually did do the moment they got into government was to take away from small business $4 billion worth of direct assistance. We know that for a fact. The Prime Minister, how is beyond me, crows that getting out of the road of small business by taking money away from them makes life easier. I am sure some people could argue that is not actually the case. The fact is, and these are facts, that we did more of this in government than the other mob are dreaming about doing on their stunt day—which is all it is. The normal course of government ought to be that you turn up here and you do not make a song and dance about it every single day. It is actually your job. Getting rid of red tape and making life easier for consumers and small business is your job. It is not a stunt to turn up here every day and crow about it and make it sound as though you are doing something new and unusual that nobody has ever done in the past.

The facts are evident when you check with the Parliamentary Library, or Fact Check, or anywhere you want to check. In fact, check with big business, the mates of the Liberals and the Nationals. Check with them on their own graphs. Check what they say about regulations and who introduced the most. Surprise, surprise, it was done under the Howard government—the great bastion of regulation and red tape. They put mountains of it in place. When Labor got in office there was this peak. We had to siphon through it all to start trying to get rid of some of it. We did, and we did a good job. At the same time, as a government we faced one of the biggest economic challenges this country had seen for 75 years—a global financial crisis, not something dreamt up by small-minded Liberals and small-minded Nationals, those bastions of small business. The first thing they do as the friend of small business is to attack small business directly by taking away $4 billion, and then they smile at them and say, 'But we're your best friends.' That makes me think, 'Oh, boy, if that's what a best friend does to someone, I'd hate to see these guys if they don't like someone.'

Let us get a few things right and look at some facts. There are 21,000 pieces of legislation that supposedly we introduced and they are made up of a range of different things, including thousands of things that were repealing bits of regulation. Of course, those opposite count those in. So we will be running a ruler across them to see how much legislation they actually introduce. What Labor did was beyond this argument about red tape—this argument about bits of paper, bits of blank paper. They are talking about a bonfire of regulation—50,000 bits of paper. They may as well go down to some paper seller, grab 50,000 pieces of paper and burn them because that is about how useful it will be to ordinary people, ordinary consumers and small business. They think that somehow repealing—

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I know the member for Oxley can look after himself very well, but I remind the parliamentary secretary and others that if they are out of their place they are disorderly.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection, Mr Deputy Speaker, from that unruly and disorderly mob. Perhaps they would like to get rid of the rules in this place as well. Perhaps they think there is a heap of regulation that we do not need in this place—and I would support them. But I can certainly defend myself.

In government, we implemented the Seamless National Economy agenda to reduce costs for business, to reduce compliance and to reduce the unnecessary and inconsistent regulation across jurisdictions. This is the hard lifting and the hard yakka that takes years, not some stunt where you grab a regulation from 1954 or some other outdated piece of law that has not been used for 50 years that just sits there, that barely anyone knows exists, and burn it and say that you have done your job as a government. They should do something a little more real.

The members on the other side think they are so clever. This is what they have come up with: let's burn a whole heap of regulations, including the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 and the amendment about the minimum size of the star on the Australian flag. I do not know how much money small business is going to save by these guys burning the amendment to the Flags Act. This is going to save people a fortune! I can see them now: small business ramming down the parliamentary secretary's front door—he shakes his head. But there are thousands of examples like that. You are getting rid of stuff that no-one even knows exists or has zero impact—monetary, economic, ethical—

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about FoFA?

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad he threw that one in. FoFA is the great catch in all this. That is in the middle of those 50,000 empty pages of nothing that will fan the flames and create lots of smoke. We will see lots of smoke coming out of those guys over there on the other side but not too much that is real except when it going to hurt people. I am not going to go into all the details of FoFA here, but, simply, FoFA is about professionalising and lifting the standards in the financial services sector, something that they have been asking for for two decades. They want the standards lifted. They want to be professional. They want to be recognised as professional. We want to help them do it.

The other thing to note here is that we want to protect consumers. If you are a retiree or you are saving for your financial independence at retirement, you need a little protection, a little regulation and a little law. Whether you are young or old, or in the middle, it does not matter. There are scams out of there and unfortunately there are people who will do the wrong thing. That is why we need good, consistent and strong consumer protection laws when it comes to financial advice. Why? Because (a) you might not know that it is happening to you (b) by the time you find out, it is too late, and (c) if you lose your life savings, you need a little help. We have seen $4 billion wiped off the funds and life savings of pensioners following the Storm collapse and Westpoint and Trio—there is a list as long as your arm, the so-called non-criminals that some of the members on the other side seem to want to protect. I do not know why they want to protect those guys, some of whom have gone to jail for ripping off pensioners. I will take the side of pensioners any day. I will take the side of people saving for their retirement any day. I can tell you that those on the other side of this House do not have too many friends. When it comes to it, National Seniors are against them and everybody is lining up, as well as all the consumer groups and even big business—and those opposite are the friends of big business; they are in their pockets.

People will understand that this is the government of insiders. They are the great insider traders of government. They are inside big business. They are inside cabinet. They are inside the Liberal Party. They are insiders. They do not care about consumers. They do not care about retirees. They do not care about ordinary folk. When they are in the middle and they get an opportunity to jump, they ask: 'Which way will I jump? Do I side with big business in making sure they get millions of dollars of extra fees or do I side with ordinary people? Do I go for the hard lift? Do I do the hard work, not just the stunts on repeal day, or do I do the good stuff?' I will tell you where the Labor Party will always be. Regardless of the popularity and regardless of the cost, we will side with consumers. We will side with senior Australians. We will protect their life savings. We will stand there for them. We will be there for the workers, moving their superannuation minimum from nine per cent to 12 per cent. We will do all that regardless of where we end up politically. We will do all that and we will continue to do that. We are not going to jump into bed with big business just because it suits somebody's particular agenda. In putting in place the standard business reporting which pulls together business activity statements, tax file numbers, declarations and a whole range of things, we will do the heavy lifting. We are the ones who will stand up for small business. We are the ones who will stand up for medium-sized enterprises. We will stand up for consumers when those opposite will not.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is nothing quite like following a commercial giant and, unfortunately, I do not have that option today; I am following the member for Oxley. Firstly, I commend the member for Mitchell for proposing this motion. Secondly, I want to talk about the structure of the way the government is attacking this. I notice I will be followed in this debate by the member for Parramatta, who I believe is the shadow parliamentary secretary for small business and does have small-business background. I imagine she is lonely in the committee meetings, because, if a tree falls in the Labor forest, no-one would hear it. I would like to praise the way the Prime Minister has attacked this agenda. It will make a difference to the small-business sector. And I want to focus on SMEs.

We have an employment and an underemployment problem in this country. It will not be solved by big business, to which the member for Oxley repeatedly referred. I do not blame him, because he comes from a union background—and they engage with big business day in, day out. This will be covered by SMEs, as it always has been and always will be. That is why this reform agenda is so important. The Prime Minister has seen fit to run this agenda out of his own portfolio. In doing so, he has found the most capable man in the member for Kooyong. He has made him parliamentary secretary and tasked him solely with this responsibility. It is an honour to be able to work with him on the New South Wales side, as I have done over the past six months, to make a real difference. Seventy per cent—the most recent figures—of the employment in this country is carried out by SMEs. They are not unionised. Eighteen per cent of the workforce is unionised, and that deals with big business.

The underemployment and unemployment problems that we face in this country will not be solved by government, they will not be solved by big business and they will not be solved by unions. They will be solved by small and medium-sized businesses. The best way that government can treat the sector is by getting out of their way and giving SMEs an environment in which they can, with confidence, take on bank debt, back themselves and employ people.

As someone that comes from a small and family business background, I can speak definitively on the topic instead of just read it from a textbook like the former member of this House and doctor of economics, Craig Emerson, who in 2008 promised to take a giant pair of scissors to red tape—and we all know what happened. If you want to see what happens on the ground and how this plays out, the best example is the carbon tax. It attacks every expense in the profit-and-loss statement of every business in this country, irrespective of size. And it has a multiplier effect. It passes through the supply chain so that the eventual supplier of the service to the consumer is in a position where costs are ratcheted up on a multiplied basis.

Traditionally, business would treat expense increases by raising their prices—that is, maintaining their margins. However, we have come through six years where, at the same time as expenses ratcheting up under the former government, consumer confidence has been shot to pieces. What has happened? Small and family business cannot pass these price rises on. What happens as a result is they absorb the cost, they lose margin, their EBIT data—their earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortisation—decreases and employment suffers. I will tell you how it plays out on the ground in Reid: small and family business people work longer hours themselves, they augment their trading hours and they do things that are criminal by nature, unfortunately, and pay cash. This is how it plays out on the ground. This reform agenda is so important because it lessens time businesses spend on compliance and on regulation, which is multiplied through state and through local government.

I am pleased to say that the member for Kooyong has identified this and, I believe, is working hard with the Prime Minister to make this a COAG reform item agenda. It is so important that we work with our state and local government counterparts. As someone that has faced red tape and regulation at all three levels of government over the past 23 years, I commend not only the member for Mitchell on what he is doing but also, more importantly, the Prime Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister for the agenda. For those opposite to sit here and belittle what we do shows their ignorance of the sector that we promote and will get out of the trouble it finds itself in.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over recent years there has been quite a bit of chest beating—from both sides, I must say—on this issue of reducing red tape. But I have to say that I think it is really a bit of a childish argument. It is somewhat of a red herring. All governments want to reduce unnecessary burdens on Australian businesses and the Australian public. But, if we are going to be in touch with the needs of the Australian people, what we should be doing is putting in place appropriate laws that protect their interests in cases of fraud, scams and unconscionable behaviour, while allowing them to go about their business and to make their own decisions about how to live their lives.

This week is the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Storm Financial. When that particular investment unit went into liquidation five years ago, 14,000 Australians lost their savings—$3 billion in total. Many of them lost their whole life savings. In the wake of that came Trio Financial, which collapsed and many mum and dad investors lost the lot. I was a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services when it travelled to Wollongong, where a lot of these investors were based. They were people who had worked their whole lives as miners in the steel mills and had retired, and, on the advice of a particular accountant in Wollongong, had invested in Trio Capital. Because of fraud, they lost the lot—they lost it all.

To have to listen to those stories was heartbreaking. Some of those retirees had remortgaged their houses on the advice of these accountants, who said that this was a fail-safe investment. Because of fraud, the money disappeared and they lost the lot. They lost not only their lives savings but their kids' inheritance. Because of that, there were suicides, an increase in the level of depression and a reduction of public health in Wollongong. We have an obligation to protect people in those circumstances, as representatives of the community. That is what Labor in government did. That is the basis of the FoFA reforms—the Future of Financial Advice.

These reforms were aimed at ensuring that accountants cannot give dodgy advice to mum and dad investors without them knowing the full picture. So we introduced a best interest duty. We introduced a duty that said that financial advisers have to act in the best interests of their clients. What does that mean? That means that there is a checklist that financial advisers have to go through to make sure that they are properly advising their clients, most of whom would not have any inkling of the trailing commissions and the fees that are paid to product developers by financial advisers simply for providing those products. If that is described as red tape, then you can blow me over. I think that is a government doing its job—protecting the Australian public from unscrupulous people. We also introduced an opt-in provision so that clients actually have to sit down with their financial adviser every two years. The financial adviser has to explain to them the fees and commissions they are paying to the financial adviser and, importantly, offer approval to that financial adviser to ensure that they are aware of those fees, commissions and conditions they are entering into with the financial adviser.

I do not believe that that is burdensome. I do not see that as red tape, but those opposite do. The government do. Last week they introduced into this parliament reforms to water down the best-interest test in the Future of Financial Advice reforms and to get rid of the opt-in provision. I say to those opposite: go back and read the transcript of the corporations and financial services committee hearings in Wollongong. Hear those harrowing stories of those retired Australians who invested the lot in those financial products that went bad and then lost the lot. Then make another assessment of whether or not you believe that that is red tape and that it should be removed by this government.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be speaking in favour of this terrific motion moved by my friend the member for Mitchell and so passionately and ably seconded by the member for Reid. This matter really opens up a very clear fault line between the position of those opposite and the position of the government. This is really fundamental stuff. On the one hand over there you have a government-knows-best, bureaucracy-knows-best, 'We know that what's required is more regulation, more legislation, more forms for businesses to fill out,' philosophy, and what you have over here is the opposite. That is a philosophy that says the best thing we can do as a government is unshackle and free the people and small businesses of Australia to be their best. That is the difference.

We do not believe that the government is well placed to tell small businesses what to do about every aspect of their daily lives. We believe that, whilst there is a place for limited regulation, the right word is 'limited'. I have had quite a bit of experience in small and large business and so perhaps can speak on this from both sides of the equation. I would have to say that one of the worst experiences of my career in business was the burden you have in small business of filling out forms for the government. There is nothing worse after spending 10, 12 or 14 hours a day working on the thing that actually matters for your business—selling a product, developing a product and hiring your staff, all of which is hard and uncertain, and you never know what is going to happen six or 12 months down the track. And you work your guts out. Sometimes you have people relying on you—people whose mortgages depend on the success of the business you are managing. And the worst thing is getting home at the end of that 12 or 14 hours and then spending a whole bunch of time filling out forms for government. We believe that that sort of intervention by government should be as limited as possible.

There are some fantastic examples of deregulation that the member for Kooyong has shepherded through this place in recent weeks. One of them I wanted to speak about—shepherded very ably through the House—affected my electorate in particular in recent weeks. It is the change for Chinese business visitors, who contribute an enormous amount to our economy, especially in my electorate of Banks. Previously, every 12 months they had to fill out another form for a visa. As you can imagine, many of these people are in frequent contact in my electorate and across Australia. It is a huge burden—lots of red tape every 12 months. There is a sensible form now: a multiple-entry three-year visa for Chinese business visitors. That is a very simple and sensible reform.

What about the standard agreement template? It is hard enough to get your mind around one government form, let alone 50 of them. Government forms using the bureaucratic language of which they are fond are not always the easiest things to deal with, but we had a situation previously where there were dozens of very confusing forms. The standard agreement template, which has been pushed through by the member for Kooyong, is a terrific initiative.

What about the credit card change? Previously, if it was over $10,000, you had to go through the whole invoicing procedure. Obviously there are credit checks involved. There is a whole lot of complexity there. Now payments up to $20,000 can be done by credit card. It is simple, it is what happens in the real world and it is what should happen with the government as well.

The Kung-Fu Panda story I probably do not need to describe again: 3D classification. It was just silly, and it is good to see that important reform.

The paid parental leave reform was championed by the Minister for Small Business. Getting rid of that penalty is, again, taking away these processes that do not add value, get in the way and make life harder for small business. That is what we believe in.

And what about ACMA? Previously ACMA had to investigate every single complaint no matter how absurd or dated. I have seen some of those complaints, and they can be absurd and dated. It is very good that there is now discretion around whether or not to proceed with complaints.

It is a terrific initiative by the member for Mitchell to move this motion, and I commend it to the House.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is really clear from listening to the Liberal Party for the last week or so that they are trying to build a story that the Liberal Party is the great deregulator and the Labor government in its day was the great regulator. I want to deal with both of those untruths now. For a start, figures—provided by the Department of Finance and Deregulation, by the way, in case you do not want to believe them—show that the net increase in legislative instruments was higher under the last two years of the Howard government than it was under the Labor government for its entire term. It was higher under Howard in 2006 and 2007 than it was under the Labor government.

I have heard the member for Mitchell. I have read his motion and thought, 'He really should have put this through fact check before he moved it—or maybe he is not very good with maths.' When you are dealing with comparisons, you are supposed to compare like with like. What the member has done here is compared one kind of legislative instrument with legislation.

The reality is quite different. The Labor government had introduced 21,000 new and amended regulations in its six years in office, as the shadow minister said, including 3,500 airworthiness directives and 4,200 instruments for tax concession orders. But it also repealed 16,000, not 100 as the member untruthfully says in his motion, but 16,000. It also embarked on a COAG reform agenda which, according to the chairman of the COAG Reform Council, the Hon. John Brumby, would result in a $6 billion increase in productivity to GDP and up to $4 billion cost savings for business each year.

We dealt with some of the appalling legacy of the Howard government. In 2007, if your business crossed state boundaries, you had to register up to six different times. Tradies and medical professionals had to register in each state. If a finance company used personal property for security, there were 23 registries and 70 acts of parliament when we came to government in 2007. We addressed all those through 31 largely completed reforms in COAG with a further eight partially concluded, which again will result in up to $4 billion cost savings for business each year. We did it the hard way.

This new lot—I find it hard not to laugh when I look at their repeal day agenda. They did the kinds of things that you do when you have nothing else to do. There are seven weeks to the budget and the government have had staff in the departments going through amending 11 different pieces of legislation to omit the word 'e-mail' and replace it with 'email'. One of the journalists refers to this as 'the war on hyphens'. This is an incredible waste of time for a government which said just a few months ago that there was an emergency and everything had to be done fast, but the government departments are spending time on this. In 16 pieces of legislation they have replaced the words 'facsimile transmission' with 'fax'. Incredibly good—small businesses all over the country will be rejoicing at this incredible reduction and red-tape! The word 'trademark' has been substituted with 'trade mark'. 'Legislative Assembly for the Northern Territory' has been substituted by 'Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory'—that is, 'of' instead of 'for'. Also, there is an omission of the phrase between 'a state or territory' and substitution of between 'a state and a territory'. Again, this is an incredible waste of the department's time.

There were also 1,001 bills—in their 8,000 or 9,000 or 10,000, on whichever day they are doing the addition—that repealed other bills before 1969. How many people in how many departments were looking for those 1,001 over how many weeks? It is the kind of thing you do when you have nothing else to do. Talking about these repeals for a week demonstrates that they have nothing else to do in this place.

In the childcare area, in order to get the numbers up for child care, in spite of the great rhetoric, they actually brought forward automatic repeals. There is a bill that actually automatically repeals—called a sunset provision—bills which are no longer relevant. They bought those bills forward in order to get the numbers up. The childcare centres all across the country will be rejoicing! There is some nasty stuff in this but essentially this is a fraud and this motion is profoundly untrue.

Debate adjourned.