Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Ryan says, this government is proud of it. But I know that people across Australia are sick of it. People across Australia are sick of this government wanting to increase its reach into their lives and make their lives more difficult. If supported, this bill would just further increase that burden of red tape for any business doing work with the government. The ever-expanding reporting requirements and compliance burdens for many hundreds of thousands of small and mid-tier businesses are becoming a major cost, impacting on the profitability of these businesses and in many cases threatening the very survival of particular businesses. There have been literally thousands of new regulations in the last four years. There has to be a point where we stop this flood of red tape and start to turn the flood back.

This government's whole rationale is to make decisions on behalf of others in the community. In the case of this bill, it is making decisions on behalf of not only other government instrumentalities but also the many hundreds of thousands of small businesses that this legislation would extend to. We have heard from Senator Bishop, who is part of this high-taxing, high-regulating, 'Let's subsidise them when they're failing because of our high taxes and regulations' government. Senator Bishop has said that the government is going to support this legislation, so we know that this government supports further regulation, when it has been promising us deregulation.

There is no doubt that this legislation would create a very significant impediment to many of the smaller and mid-tier businesses doing business with the government. I am sure that this is not the intent of the bill. I am sure that is not what the member for Lyne was seeking to achieve. He just wanted to improve the checks and balances on a bad government. He is embarrassed by being associated with this bad government and he thinks that, if we give some more powers to the Auditor-General, they will be able to do the job that he is not able to do. The member for Lyne actually has it in his power to improve government in Australia without adding significant additional red tape for hundreds of thousands of businesses across Australia. I really and truly think that the member for Lyne should reflect on that. He could actually achieve both better government and less red tape for small business. If we had better government, there would be no need for this legislation which would strangle more small businesses in additional red tape.

I know that members in the other place do not really pay that much attention to what happens in this chamber, particularly these days.