Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to 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—

Government Senators:

Government senators interjecting—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senators on my right. Senator Collins.

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

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. The member for Hume, when speaking on this bill, quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying: 'That government is best which governs least.' I must say that placing such emphasis on the correction of typos could certainly be described as governing least. There is, however, no record of Thomas Jefferson ever uttering those words. No, that famous quote is better attributed to Henry David Thoreau. He wrote in his essay on Civil Disobedience:

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all";

As the Liberal Party ignores the challenges facing Australia and, instead, descends into internalised brawling and leadership speculation, we already have a government which governs not at all. Unlike Thoreau, I do not think this is to be welcomed.

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

Thank you very much, indeed, Mr Acting Deputy President. I share with you, I am sure, that we will take to our graves the experience of having suffered through that speech.

This is a cognate debate on the Amending Acts 1970 to 1979 Repeal Bill 2014 and the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2014. The work of the first bill is to repeal some 656 obsolete statutes from Commonwealth law. The purpose of the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2014 is to correct errors in a large number of existing bills which it is not the purpose of the bill to repeal.

I want to concentrate on the Amending Acts 1970 to 1979 Repeal Bill, but, before I come back to that, let me say a word about the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2). Senator Collins took the government to task for listing this bill as an item of government business rather than as a non-controversial item of legislation, apparently in ignorance of the fact that the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) was listed as a non-controversial bill at the end of last year, as these bills customarily are. Unfortunately, it was filibustered by the opposition at the time and was not reached. It could have been dealt with in the orthodox way as a non-controversial bill in 2014, but because of filibustering by the Australian Labor Party that was not able to be done. So it is being dealt with cognately with the Amending Acts 1970 to 1979 Repeal Bill 2014. The point is that not one moment of extra parliamentary time in government business is being taken to deal with the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2), which, had the Labor Party showed a spirit of cooperation, would have been through the parliament as a non-controversial bill last year.

Let me turn, then, to the Amending Acts 1970 to 1979 Repeal Bill. This is the next tranche in the government's deregulation agenda, much mocked by Senator Jacinta Collins. If I may say so, we saw in Senator Collins's inelegant speech a classic example of the differences between those who sit on my side of the chamber and those who sit opposite, because, you see, those who sit opposite—those of the Australian Labor Party, those inheritors of the socialist tradition of the 19th century, now a pale, wan social democratic point of view—love laws. They love regulation. They live for green tape and red tape. They just worship at the altar of government. The more power government has over the lives of everyday people, the happier they are. The more families, businesspeople and community organisations are tied hand and foot by red tape and regulation, the happier the Australian Labor Party are. It cannot be said often enough that the big difference—the eternal difference—between the Labor Party and us in the Liberal-National Party, on this side of the chamber, is that we want to set people free and the Labor Party want to tie them in knots, in regulations, in red tape, in green tape, in beige tape, in statutory instruments and in every manner of interfering, pettifogging regulation and legislation that they can possibly imagine. So determined are the Australian Labor Party to cling onto this forest—this thick undergrowth—of laws that they even object to getting rid of obsolete laws. They even object to getting rid of laws that have no practical operation any longer.

As I said, this is the latest instalment of the Abbott government's deregulatory agenda, led in the first instance by my friend the member for Kooyong, now the Assistant Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. Can I tell you what we have achieved already, before this bill is even dealt with. As of 22 October 2014, on the first two instalments of the repeal of obsolete legislation, we had repealed 1,803 acts that were obsolete, that had cluttered the statute book since 1901, when this parliament first convened and that both sides of politics had neglected to get rid of. We had repealed 10,157 legislative instruments—again, delegated legislation or subordinate legislation that was obsolete but nevertheless provided a compliance hazard for citizens and for businesses. In total, all told, as of 22 October last year, we had repealed 57,200 pages of obsolete legislation. So devoted is the Labor Party to tying the Australian people and the Australian economy up in unnecessary, burdensome and meddlesome laws and regulations that they objected to us doing that, even though not one of those bills and statutory instruments had any effect whatsoever.

Treasury has estimated that the compliance cost to business, lifted from the shoulders of business by the repeal days of last year, is in excess of $2 billion—in excess of $2 billion of compliance costs wasted by businesses in particular that had to do their due diligence to ensure that they were not in fact affected by any of this obsolete legislation. That is $2 billion of money wasted.

I know that to the Australian Labor Party that wastes tens of hundreds of billions of dollars as a matter of routine $2 billion might not sound like very much. But we on our side of the chamber think that $2 billion is a lot of money. You can do a lot of good things with $2 billion. Businesses would rather have that $2 billion in their profit margin than as an outlay because they had that compliance burden arising from obsolete legislation.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That employ people.

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

That is right, Senator O'Sullivan: one of the things they could have done was employed a lot more people. But of course employing people rather than protecting the vested interests of trade union members has never been part of the Australian Labor Party's agenda.

Turning then to the Amending Acts 1970 to 1979 Repeal Bill 2014, it tells you, I think, just how much the pace of legislative interference in people's lives had accelerated in this country in the decade 1970 to 1979, that decade famously described by the great Barry Humphries as 'The decade that taste forgot.' It tells you how far the legislative burden had increased when you consider that, in the 70 years between the beginning of the Federation and 1970, the aggregate number of unnecessary laws that were lying about on the statute book was 1,803. But yet, in just 10 years, the volume of Commonwealth legislation had so exploded that that produced 656 bills which now, 40 or so years later, are considered to be obsolete.

You might wonder, Madam Acting Deputy President, what was it about the 1970s, apart from it being 'The decade that taste forgot,' in Australian history? There is one particular period during the decade of the 1970s that we will always remember with a shudder—you won't, Senator Birmingham, because you are too young. But those of us who are older than Senator Birmingham will well remember with a shudder that it was the three catastrophic years of the Whitlam government, between 1970 and 1975.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I still have nightmares!

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

Senator O'Sullivan still has nightmares. So do we all. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead; I personally was quite fond of the late Mr Whitlam. But there has been such a romanticisation by those opposite of the spectacularly catastrophic Whitlam government, which increased government spending in the course of two budgets by 40 per cent and wondered why the economy got out of control, inflation got out of control and unemployment went through the roof.

One of the features of the Whitlam government was an explosion of legislation. We saw the pace at which this parliament decided to pass laws because it thought it was a good idea; because it thought Canberra knew better than Brisbane, Sydney, Dubbo, Parkes, Cooktown or Karratha; because it thought that bureaucrats knew better how people ought to live their lives than the people who were living those lives themselves; because it thought that government was not the servant of their people but their master; and because it was infested with that dirigiste ideology it decided that we needed as many laws as we could possibly have. We are still trying to live down the legacy of the Whitlam government. But today we make another step towards living down that legacy by repealing 656 obsolete acts of parliament, most of them passed during the three dark years, from 1972 to 1975.

Senator Collins, in her inelegant way makes mock of what we are seeking to do. We are seeking to remove from the statute books laws and regulations that are unnecessary and obsolete. What does it tell you about the Labor Party, that they object to us doing that? They object to us removing laws that are obsolete.

The Abbott government is very proud that we are removing obsolete laws and regulations, and unnecessary costs arising from overreach by this Commonwealth parliament and we will continue to do so. There are two more repeal days scheduled for this year, 2015. We will move a decade at a time so that we will continue to identify and remove from the statute books obsolete laws. As we seek to do that, as we seek to set individual citizens, families and small businesses free, and as we seek to reduce the cost of compliance with the red tape, the green tape and the beige tape, we expect the Labor Party will continue to fight us tooth and nail.

You will fight us tooth and nail because it is as much an affront to your view of the world that legislation should be repealed as it is an affront to the liberal view of the world that legislation should be passed in a gratuitous way which interferes unnecessarily with the freedom of action of citizens and businesses.

I see Senator Cameron over there. To his great credit—I am going to pay you a compliment, Senator Cameron—

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't do it!

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to 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.