Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Listening to my colleagues in the earlier bill debate, and in terms of dealing with these two bills cognately, I am left to wonder why we are occupying government business time with bills of such a nature and why they have not been listed as non-contro legislation. It seems only to suggest that the government does not have a business agenda, and that became quite clear in Senator Carr's contribution and the other contributions to the Customs bill, but will be clear in these two bills as well.

I think there are three further bills in the non-contro session that we have in the Senate tomorrow. They are quite rightly there, and we will deal with them expeditiously. I cannot imagine why we are occupying very important government business time dealing with bills of this character here and now. It brings to my mind the thought I have had in the last week or so about a skit I think someone should create. This skit would be Mr Abbott saying: 'We have a plan. We are not the Labor Party. We have a plan. We are not the Labor Party. We are not the Labor Party.' The reality is there is no plan and the government business agenda here today highlights that there is no plan.

So let me go into the detail of these two cognate bills, which again will demonstrate the lack of a plan and how this government parades repeal bills and reforms as if they are part of some plan, which is indeed quite vacuous. Before I get into the detail, let me say again that I look forward to the government having a plan about family support. I am quite sceptical as to whether the new minister will be able to develop a decent plan. We have seen the example of what the last budget meant in terms of family support. This government is suffering the consequences of what the public at large thought about this government's approach to family support and what might be included in a family package.

Yesterday in question time we heard Senator Cormann talk about child care. Well, I look forward to some substance behind those words. But let's go to more routine matters. This bill, the Amending Acts 1970 to 1979 Repeal Bill, follows on from the Amending Acts 1901 to 1969 Repeal Bill introduced in the government's first repeal day stunt in March 2014. The bill repeals around 650 amending or repeal acts passed between 1970 and 1979. As the amendments or repeals have already taken place, the effect of these bills is spent—much like the Abbott government. Section 7 of the Acts Interpretation Act makes it clear that the repeal of an amending or repeal act does not undo its operation. This bill therefore has no effect on the operation of any law. Not a single piece of legislation repealed by this bill has any operation. All of the acts to be repeals have been inoperative for at least 35 years. They do not and cannot have any bearing on the needs of Australian businesses and individuals in 2015.

The explanatory memorandum to the bill claims that the repeal of these acts is desirable in order to reduce the regulatory burden and make accessing the law simpler for both businesses and individuals. However, the explanatory memorandum also states: 'The repeal of these bills will not substantially alter existing arrangements or make any change to the substance of the law.' And there is no financial impact. I want to be clear about this. This bill, as the government has admitted, will have no substantive effect on the law nor any financial impact. It will not alleviate the burden of a single regulation on any Australian business or family. Let me repeat that: it will not alleviate the burden of any single regulation from any Australian business or family.

Labor has been clear that we do not argue with getting rid of regulations that are redundant, no longer in force and not relevant. Again, this is why this legislation should be dealt with as non-controversial legislation, in the usual place, on a Thursday afternoon. It is the same attitude that we had when we were in government. We repealed over 16,000 acts, regulations and legislative instruments when we were in office. Let's not pretend, however, that the removal of 650 acts as proposed in this legislation will do anything to reduce the regulatory burden. The explanatory memorandum to the bill itself says: 'The repeal of these bills will not substantially alter existing arrangements or make any change to the substance of the law.' Of course, this bill was never intended to have any substance. It is simply a concoction, a chimera. Its only purpose is to give the Prime Minister and his former parliamentary secretary, the member for Kooyong, a flimsy justification to boast about the number of regulations they have supposedly abolished in their repeal day stunts. They held press conferences. They made a website. Government backbenchers have speechified both here and in the House about the government's supposedly bold deregulation agenda—and this is part of it.

This is quite an incredible use of the parliament of Australia: the passage of legislation of no effect so that the government can congratulate itself in the press. It is quite incredible that this government has the gall to tell the Australian public they are removing regulation while they quietly admit in the fine print of the parliamentary documentation that this bill has no such effect.

As I said, this bill, which deals with amending and repealing acts between 1970 and 1979, follows on from a similar bill passed last year which dealt with those between 1901 and 1969. That bill repealed 1,120 amending and repeal acts and covered six decades of spent legislation. This bill restricts itself to just one decade of just 650 pieces of spent legislation.

I would invite the Attorney-General to explain to the Senate why the government's brave crusade against inoperative legislation has petered out this way. I might be forgiven for cynically suspecting that this bill deals with just a decade of spent legislation so that the government might have the opportunity to introduce several more similar bills in the coming year—further decades of spent legislation.

The government has two repeal days scheduled for 2015 and will need some substance to those stunts and yet, after 16 months of government, their deregulation agenda remains a mirage. I suspect they must continue to trot out bills of this illusory nature so that they can be seen to be doing something, so they can pretend to have a plan beyond the Prime Minister's frequent comment: 'We are not the Labor Party.'

The Australian community has seen through this charade. The business community has lost faith in the Liberal government. The Australian people have lost faith in the Liberal government. The government has the gall to return with a third bill of this type this parliamentary year during government business time in the Senate. It is no wonder people feel the government is desperate and see how poorly it is managing the Senate itself. It is no wonder the Prime Minister says he is going to have another look at how he manages the Senate in this parliament, because he needs a long serious look.

Let me go to the second of these cognate bills—the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2014, also the second such bill introduced by the Abbott government. Statute law revision bills are an ordinary feature of all Australian parliaments and indeed other Westminster parliaments around the world. The Commonwealth parliament has dealt with such bills as regular matters since at least 1934. They are, as the Bills Digest for this present bill notes: a matter of housekeeping. Again, why here in government business time?

Statute law revision bills correcting drafting errors, updating cross-references and removing spent or obsolete provisions—these pieces of legislation certainly serve a worthy purpose: they maintain the tidiness of the statute book.

This is an ongoing task for this and other parliaments. It is the work usually undertaken by dedicated parliamentary lawyers, and I thank them for their diligence. I do not want to criticise their work, but we should be very clear about the nature of this legislation. We should not for a minute accept the government's claim that this bill is any kind of bold deregulatory reform. It is not. It is absolutely routine housekeeping work of the kind undertaken by any government—usually during non-controversial legislation time on a Thursday afternoon.

It is clear that those opposite are not just any government though. No, this is a government so bereft of policy ambition, so lacking in substance and direction and so beleaguered just halfway through their first term that they cling to this bill as some kind of major reform, as some kind of serious aspect of a plan—something to hang on to behind the: 'We are not the Labor Party.' A normal Australian government does not hold a press conference when it corrects a typo. But this government will shout it from the mountain tops with legislation such as this.

I want to provide the Senate with some examples of the important reforms implemented by the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2014. My colleague, the shadow Attorney-General, listed some in the other place. This bill, for example, fixes an incorrect cross-reference in the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Act 1994. It closes a bracket in subsection 474.25B(2) of the Criminal Code. It corrects the spelling of 'laminated' in a schedule to the Customs Tariff Act 1995 which presently reads 'laminiated'. And it removes a comma from the Surveillance Devices Act 2004, but adds a full stop to the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993.

I am sure the Clerk has a view about whether these are, perhaps, tasks the clerks could assist us with in legislating rather than simply occupying important government business time in the Senate. I read in the Hansard that in the other place the member for Hume—