Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This statute law revision bill is known as the Statute Law Revision (Spring 2016) Bill. The parliament has introduced these sorts of bills regularly since 1934. They deal with uncontroversial, technical matters which will not in substance change the operation of the law. They all correct drafting errors, remove spent and obsolete provisions, and update cross-references.

This bill is called the Statute Law Revision (Spring 2016) Bill even though an identical bill to this was introduced into the last parliament on 17 March—during autumn. The only difference between this bill and the one introduced in autumn is the addition of one extra amendment in schedule 2. It corrects an amendment to the Customs Act by the Indirect Tax Laws Amendment (Assessment) Act 2012 which, due to a numbering error, referred to a non-existent provision of the Customs Act.

Now, the bill has reappeared as part of the Prime Minister's '25 point battle plan', supposedly to be expedited through the parliament. We were told that they needed to be rushed through as a matter of priority. Labor is happy to support this bill, which makes a number of technical changes to the law. Among other things, this bill: corrects drafting, clerical and typographical errors, including correcting the numbering of the Excise Act or replacing the words 'a item' with 'an item' in the Customs Act; amends the Public Lending Right Act, replacing references to the Attorney-General with the more flexible 'Minister administering the Copyright Act'; and repeals spent and obsolete provisions. None of this is groundbreaking; it is just part of the government's routine work.

Far from being about 'deregulation', this bill does nothing that has not been done regularly by governments since 1934. This bill does not reduce the regulatory burden on Australian business, nor does it remove or streamline any operative regulation. The Prime Minister should be embarrassed that his stocks have sunk so low that his government is so adrift, that he has to truss up routine legislative work like this as some kind of policy masterstroke. Nonetheless, this is a worthy bill. I thank the Office of Parliamentary Counsel for their hard work in maintaining the Commonwealth statute book and for their work on this bill, as with all other statute law reform bills. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.