Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I assume that the senator is not suggesting that we should take Botswana as the benchmark when it comes to labour rights or employment conditions or wage rates. I assume he is not taking the position that Ms Rinehart has when it comes to ensuring we are a competitive destination for investment. I make the point in terms of deregulation that, under the Howard government, we saw a whole lot of promises around deregulation and nothing delivered except the GST, which imposed a greater burden of regulation upon small and medium enterprises particularly. The Howard government commissioned two reviews, the Bell review and the Banks report. They did not act on a great number of those recommendations. We actually are acting on them, and if the senator wants to ensure things like the harmonisation of occupational health and safety, recommended in most of these reports, I suggest he go and talk to Premier Baillieu (Time expired)