Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Gillard-Rudd government. I hear the interjections. What we saw was a commitment to more and more regulation. That was the commitment of the previous government. They trumpeted it. When they were asked about how successful they were as a government and how well the parliament was working, what was the first thing they would say? They would say, 'We've passed hundreds of pieces of legislation; look how successful we are.' I say to the Labor Party that that is not what success looks like. Success is about a government making it easier for business to prosper, making it easier for Australians to make a living, making it easier for small business to employ more people. That is what success looks like for a government. If that involves getting rid of some pieces of legislation and getting rid of some regulation, then that is what success is about—and that is what we should be doing.

We have also heard from the Business Council of Australia. Its chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, said:

The release today of the federal government’s repeal day legislation marks a turning point in dealing with the high costs and inefficiencies faced by businesses and consumers in our economy.

The BCA has reported that an environmental approval process for one of its member companies cost the company more than $20 million, required more than 4,000 meetings and led to a 12,000-page report. But it did not end there! The approval that the member company was given had 1,500 conditions and around 8,000 subconditions. This is the extent of regulation in this country.

Universities Australia has estimated that our universities spend around $280 million a year just on compliance and reporting requirements. Each university operates a compliance department which typically has between 15 and 20 dedicated staff. They report:

A typical university is also required to report over 50 different data sets to the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIICCSRTE) annually, comprising 200 reporting instances per year, and over 50 data sets to other Government departments.

We should be aiming to remove duplication between differing levels of government and across government agencies. We should be aiming to streamline onerous and costly processes and we should be taking a common-sense approach to regulation.

In conclusion, I do commend this bill. It is, in the words of Jennifer Westacott, 'a turning point'—because we have not seen this over the past few years. What we have seen has been, in fact, the opposite. We have seen the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government taking decisions that piled burden upon burden on our business sector—and particularly our small business sector. The coalition understands that, when you do that, it has serious implications for our economy, for individuals and for businesses—family businesses, small businesses, medium businesses and large businesses. It has implications for their ability to employ people. It has implications for their ability to remain profitable. It has implications for their ability to innovate. We want to see all of these things happen. We want to see an innovation economy. We want to see more employment. We want to see small, family businesses, in particular, able to thrive and not be crushed by the burden of overregulation—the time burden and the cost burden that goes with all of that.

There are many aspects to our deregulation agenda and this bill is a very important part of it—and we are going to build on this start. Twice a year we are going to dedicate days to repealing legislation that puts too much burden on our business sector. Surely that is something that those opposite should be applauding. Surely they should be hanging their heads in shame at the way they overregulated these very businesses—the way they put more and more burdens on these family businesses. They should be hanging their heads in shame. They should not just be supporting this piece of legislation; they should be supporting other aspects of our deregulation agenda—all of which are designed to give us a more prosperous economy, to give us a more prosperous society and to give individuals, families and businesses the ability to choose, without too much government interference, how they make a living. I commend this legislation to the Senate.