George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I know, Senator O'Sullivan. Do not bestir yourself. Let us give credit where credit is due. Of all his many shortcomings, Senator Doug Cameron could not be described as a hypocrite. Senator Doug Cameron is not a hypocrite. Senator Cameron is proudly an old-fashioned, unreconstructed old socialist who descended upon us from the old dockyards of Glasgow. He meandered his way into the Southern Hemisphere and now brings the same cast of mind of an old Scottish socialist to modern Australia. Senator Cameron, you are not a hypocrite at all. You embrace proudly—you boast it from the rooftops—a point of view that is so obsolete, so irrelevant to modern Australia, so destructive of our future prosperity and you nevertheless adhere to it, you unreconstructed old Scottish socialist, you.

Let me return to the business at hand. We will continue to repeal from Commonwealth legislation acts of parliament, regulations, statutory instruments and other delegated legislation which no longer serves a public good. We are perplexed but not particularly surprised that the Labor Party has a problem with that. We will continue to adopt a philosophy when it comes to legislation that the more lightly the parliament imposes burdens upon the citizen the better. We will continue to adopt an approach to legislation that the fewer costs—in particular, compliance costs—with which parliament burdens small business the better, because we believe that the productive energies in this economy and this country lie in the hearts and souls and minds and industry and muscle of individual enterprising men and women. We do need an appropriate structure of laws—of course we do. What we do not want is a wasteland of unnecessary and burdensome legislation which only interferes unnecessarily and wastefully with individual endeavour.

In winding up this debate, may I say the government is proud of its deregulation agenda. We are proud of the achievement of our recently appointed Assistant Treasurer, the Hon. Josh Frydenberg, in driving this agenda. We get it. We get the fact that the Australian people yearn to be set free from the burden of government, yearn to be set free from the cost of unnecessary compliance, yearn to have a parliament that is respectful of them rather than arrogant in its prerogative powers to legislate to tell people how they ought to live their lives and run their businesses. The deregulation agenda of the Abbott government, of which the repeal days are a very important element, give expression to that philosophy. They give expression to a philosophy that the Commonwealth statutes should be tidy, should be necessary, should be uncluttered and should not overreach. I commend the bills to the chamber and I look forward to further repeal days in future months.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.