David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Registers Bill 2019 and its associated legislation today. Despite the volume of legislation before us, I know just how important this initiative is.

Before I go into the details of the bill, I would like to recognise this government's continued commitment to ensuring that Australian businesses can survive and thrive in these difficult times. As many people here know, the Morrison government has introduced a number of initiatives to cushion the economic impact of the coronavirus and to help build a bridge to recovery. A total of $260 billion is being injected into the economy by our government in order to keep Australians in work and businesses in business. This includes $83.7 billion for the government's economic stimulus package, $90 billion from the Reserve Bank of Australia, $15 billion from the government to deliver easier access to finance and, lastly, the $70 billion JobKeeper payment. This economic support package is equivalent to 13.3 per cent of our GDP.

The government is taking this unprecedented action to support small businesses, tradies, employees and those who are facing tough times ahead. Support covers casual workers, sole traders, small and medium businesses and also industry sectors, such as agriculture, aged care, universities and of course health. It also covers regulatory protection and financial support for businesses to stay in business, giving them the breathing space to work out the best way to keep their businesses moving.

Through the government's $40 billion SME guarantee scheme, we will support small- and medium-sized business enterprises to get access to working capital to help them get through the impact of the virus on their business. The scheme will complement the government's initiative to cut red tape to allow SMEs to get access to credit faster. It also complements announcements made by Australian banks to support small businesses with their existing loans. This builds on the support for business and business investment provided in our economic support packages. That includes increasing the instant asset write-off and, now, extending the $150,000 instant asset write-off for six months through to 31 December 2020. It also includes backing business investment by providing accelerated depreciation deductions. The package also includes temporary relief for directors from any personal liability for trading while insolvent. The Corporations Act will be amended to provide temporary and targeted relief for companies to deal with unforeseen events that arise as a result of the coronavirus.

So, what would these bills do? These actions address the most immediate and pressing needs of business as a whole in these challenging economic times. But we on this side of the chamber are looking ahead to ensure that the economic circumstances recover and that doing business is easier into the future, and these bills help do that. As the Productivity Commission's 2015 report Barriers to business set-up, transfer and closure noted:

While it is relatively easy to start a business, a number of longstanding issues with specific regulatory requirements, regulator engagement and funding remain unaddressed. These make entry for some new businesses unnecessarily complex or costly.

Part of the challenge is the need to register and then re-create information needed to register a business. This can cover Commonwealth, state and local government requirements and requires new businesses to expend enormous amounts of time and money to complete. Initiatives such as the Australian business account initiatives and the Australian Business Licence and Information Service have helped overcome some of the information challenges that businesses face in understanding the requirements of registration, licensing and permits at all levels of government.

But they also lack the capacity to share data and information easily. We cannot go on having multiple business registers all over government. By some accounts, in the Commonwealth setting alone there are numerous types of regulatory registers that businesses may have to register on, depending on their circumstances. To me, as a previous small business owner, that is absolutely crazy and creates a red-tape burden full of time-wasting and duplicative effort by business owners. That may be alright for businesses that can afford to employ people to help them with that, but it is an expensive and time-consuming process for small business, especially if they also have to deal with state and local government registration requirements as well.

These bills, modernising the business registers, will address registry fragmentation, improve business user experience, reduce risks to ongoing operations, foster data-driven innovation and enable better use of registry data. They might even build upon the great work already done in the business account and business licensing initiatives. Just imagine a business registration that allows Commonwealth agencies to share ABR data and allows state and local governments to incorporate ABR data into their systems to improve the experience for new businesses starting up in their jurisdictions.

To achieve this, the IT infrastructure underpinning Australia's business registry services needs to be addressed to meet demand for registry services now and into the future. No longer can we have government IT systems designed in such a way that they are bespoke, are increasingly complex and cost extraordinary amounts of time to change or modify. Some systems can take up to 40 days of testing just to modify one line of code, because they are so complex and interdependent in their design. We have to be able to create an environment where data can be processed, shared and updated easily, to the benefit of government, business and the community as a whole.

To facilitate the implementation of the new registry system, a legislative package has been drafted that creates a new regime that is flexible, technology neutral and governance neutral. With this approach, the registrar will have the flexibility to make data standards that determine what information will be collected, how that information will be collected and the manner in which the information will be maintained. The registrar can make a disclosure framework to provide the basis for disclosing protected information to the public. The disclosure framework is designed to replace a one-size-fits-all approach to publicly available data to one where information is disclosed by using a risk based approach.

The government acknowledges that while directors and companies have needed the breathing space to deal with the impacts of coronavirus, there are still those who have a history of continually breaking the trust of consumers, employees and partners. This legislation seeks to address this abuse by introducing a requirement for each appointed director of a registered body corporate to have a director identification number, a DIN. The objective of the new DIN requirement is to promote good corporate conduct. In particular, it will assist regulators to detect and address unlawful behaviour and, through doing so, deter such behaviour. The DIN will be a unique identifier for any person who consents to being a director and verifies their identity. The person will keep the DIN forever, even if their directorship with a particular company changes. This, too, is an important initiative that also came from the Productivity Commission's report that argued for greater transparency and accountability of directors who sought to avoid their obligations through the insidious practice of phoenix companies.

In my concluding remarks, let me reiterate just how important this initiative is for Australian business. By reducing red tape to make it easier for business, improving shared data and information sharing at all levels of government, and by helping the better governance of business, the Morrison government is making it possible for businesses to thrive in these difficult economic times. I also acknowledge the hard work of those current and former public servants across government who have striven over the last three-plus years to see this initiative through. While in recent weeks it has been fashionable for the opposition to berate the Treasury portfolio, teams from across the Australian Business Register, ASIC, the ATO and the departments of industry and Treasury, have worked tremendously hard to overcome numerous hurdles and bring this initiative to life. It is through their hard work and professionalism in dealing with such legislative complexity that the government can deliver on its promise to modernise Australian business registers and ensure that there is a modern, effective and efficient registration regime for businesses into the future.