Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Law Improvement Package No. 1) Bill 2023 is a six-schedule Treasury omnibus bill, and the coalition will be supporting this bill. The compliance burden and complexity of the Corporations Act and financial services framework is an issue that is consistently raised by stakeholders. Red tape is a growing challenge for business. However, support for passage of this bill is no substitute for a government that is refusing to take responsibility for high inflation, rising mortgage payments, rising prices at the check-out and rising energy bills, to name just a few pressures faced by ordinary Australians. These challenges faced by Australians are not at all addressed in this bill. Instead, we have a government that doesn't have a plan and doesn't have the priorities to fix the problems that are facing Australians today.

Schedules 1, 2 and 3 of the bill make amendments to implement recommendations made by the Australian Law Reform Commission in interim reports A and B of its review of the legislative frameworks for the corporations and financial services regulations. These measures are designed to make a number of technical amendments and corrections to simplify the law and improve its navigability, as recommended by the ALRC. The changes seek to create a single glossary of defined terms in the Corporations Act, repeal redundant provisions, correct errors, improve clarity and unfreeze the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 so that the current version applies to the Corporations Act and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act. Schedule 4 makes amendments to the Insurance Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1991, the Life Insurance Act 1995 and the Insurance Act 1973. These acts are the enabling acts of certain legislative instruments regulating the insurance industry, and they are due to sunset 1 October this year. This schedule will update certain provisions in order to reflect more modern practices. Schedule 5 transfers longstanding and accepted matters currently contained in three Australian Securities and Investments Commission-made legislative instruments to the Corporations Act and the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. Schedule 6 amends various laws in the Treasury portfolio to ensure that those laws operate in accordance with policy intent. It makes minor changes to improve administrative outcomes and remedies unintentional consequences, as well as correcting technical and drafting defects.

The coalition supports measures that reduce red tape for business and always will. Independent research has estimated that the cost of red tape to the economy is $176 billion annually. Red tape's cost to the economy is more than just a direct cost. It includes businesses never started, jobs never created and ambitions never fulfilled due to bureaucratic interference. This project is no small task, with Treasury portfolio laws covering over 50 acts that contain thousands and thousands of provisions spanning corporations law, taxation, competition, consumer policy and financial sector deregulation. This needs to be the beginning—not the end—of reducing red tape and supporting deregulation.

Sadly, while this bill has many features that we can support, it doesn't make up for Labor's broken promises on tax, on franking credits, on superannuation taxes and, particularly, on taxing unrealised capital gains. Many small business will be captured under Labor's super changes and unrealised capital gains taxes. Many charities will lose out from Labor's broken promise on franking credits. Labor's broken promise on superannuation taxes means that, with soaring cost-of-living pressures, Australians will be worse off. It's not just a broken promise; it undermines confidence in our superannuation system. Superannuation, please remember, is your money; it's not the government's money. It's your money to deliver quality of life in retirement. It's not a piggy bank for governments to tax and spend. Despite promising no changes to superannuation before the election, the Prime Minister is proposing to double super taxes on one in 10 Australians by the time they retire. He's proposing to stop companies from offering franking credits to Australian investors, to superannuation funds and to charities. The Prime Minister is proposing to tax unrealised capital gains in super, meaning that Australian retirees will pay tax on money that they haven't even made yet. Labor was dishonest about changing superannuation. They've been dishonest about how many Australian will be affected. Despite claiming less than 80,000 Australians will be affected, independent research has shown that, by retirement age, more than 500,000 will be hit by this new tax. The government can't explain how the change will work. They can't explain how many people will be affected. The Prime Minister says it will only impact one in 200 people. How wrong he is. The Minister for Finance says it will impact one in 10. But if the government can't explain it, how can Australians understand it? Australians will be right to wonder what Australia will tax next.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's more! We have not one but two opportunities. I thought, 'I haven't made a contribution in relation to financial services regulation reform,' as I was wandering past the Senate chamber door and I heard that phrase. I thought I might have an opportunity to have a few things to say about it, and I took that opportunity in the last debate. I was delighted to have an opportunity to participate in that. I find that there is another opportunity with another important piece of reform that the Albanese Labor government has scheduled here for the Senate's consideration to make a contribution in this important area of financial services reform. I would be delighted to find out there were a third and fourth over the course of today or this week; that would be absolutely terrific.

I listened carefully to Senator Hume's contribution. There's a silver lining in every cloud, isn't there? The silver lining is that the coalition has indicated they are going to support this important piece of reform. The cloud is the balance of the contribution, which demonstrates the incapacity of the Liberal and National parties to learn the lessons from the last election. Australians are looking for government to act in an adult way, in the national interest, in their interests whether it is drier areas of financial services reform like this or in other matters. But what we got instead from Senator Hume in the coalition's contribution was a sort of spray of allegations about the performance of this government in this area, about high inflation and the high cost of living, questions which of course the Morrison government paid no attention to—declining productivity, the worst period of productivity growth.

Sensible competition law reform, sensible financial services reforms are not insignificant contributors to productivity. But after the worst decade on record in productivity growth, those opposite have no regard to these issues now. It is all finger-pointing and fingerpainting their set of issues. They can't be taken seriously if they don't engage with their own economic failure in office and the position they have left Australia in.

I heard a young person in my home suburb refer to the 'cozzy livs'. Apparently, that is what the young people call the cost of living. It has become such a big issue for Australian families that it has found its way into the popular culture for young people as well. Moving on from the desultory decade of failure of those opposite over the cost of living, supply chain pressures, productivity and energy policy, all of these things are making it harder for Australian families, Australian households, Australian industry and the Australian economy to adjust to the high cost of living and increase in the cost of living.

Senator Hume then reflected in an extraordinary way on the fiscal position of this government. This government, the Albanese government, in its second budget in May delivered a surplus. I remember the 'back in black' smugness of the previous government when it came to claiming an illusory surplus that they never delivered. I remember it well because Senator Hume and former Senator Cormann and all these characters were out with their 'back in black' mugs. The music didn't quite fit—they glossed over the way 'back in black' didn't quite bang in the way the song 'Back in Black' does—but they produced mugs. I remember the mugs well because I've got 12 of them. I want to say very clearly, because I'm sure the organisational wing of the Labor Party is listening, I didn't buy them from the Liberal Party of Australia. They were available on their website. You could see them there; they were available. Liberal Party branch members, I'm sure, were buying them. They're not bringing them out for afternoon teas now. They're in the bin, in the back cupboard or being used to prop up the cat box or whatever else. I had them made. I want to assure senators that no profit for the Liberal Party of Australia was engaged in my purchase of these mugs. There was a Reject Shop in Redfern that made up mugs—any old mugs—and it made up these mugs.

I've got the mugs in my office as a lasting memorial to the gap between Liberal Party promises, Liberal Party slogans, Liberal Party fantasies and delivery. As it always turns out, during a period of being too long in office they trashed opportunities in financial services reform—a subject I want to keep coming back to, the subject of this important piece of legislation—malingered in other areas of economic reform and went missing in energy policy, where their signature achievement, apart from a decade of complete chaos and desultory hopelessness, was to remove four gigawatts of capacity from the system and put only one back in. They are the biggest driver of high energy and electricity prices in the Australian economy today, which is why the then energy minister, now the shadow Treasurer, Mr Taylor, hid from the Australian people in the lead-up to the election, in a less than honest way, the upcoming electricity price rises that Australian consumers could expect as a result of the Morrison government's, the Turnbull government's and the Abbott government's hopeless failures in energy policy.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's a stretch. What a joke! You're trying to shut down coal and gas.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As much as you want to make noise in 2023 about energy policy failure, do you know what has driven energy policy failure? It's 2022, it's 2021 and it's 2020. It's the period between 2013 and 2019. Much like in financial services reform, where right now the 'no-alition' can't bring themselves to make key appointments in economic policy areas because they're good at slogans, memes and negative politics but have never been any good at hard work, they want to create the impression that systemic, structural failures in our energy market, driven by nine-and-a-bit years of indolence and inward-looking arguments, are somehow a substitute. But Australians have got used to the negative politics of Mr Dutton, Mr Taylor and the opposition. What has the Albanese government delivered? A surplus. What has the government done with the surplus? It has banked most of it in a prudent and careful way and it has provided sensible cost-of-living relief that puts downward pressure on inflation. And it has been open. It's not like the last government, who spent every cent plus had a trillion dollars in debt with nothing to show for it in terms of lasting reform. What this government has done is they've acted prudently, banked the surplus for use in future years and to retire debt, and been open about the structural challenges that the Australian economy faces. They've put downward pressure on the cost of living.

This piece of reform is an important piece of reform. It goes with the last piece of legislation that the chamber dealt with. I listened carefully to Senator Hume's contribution about red tape—another area where there is a constant refrain, constant sloganeering and constant moaning. They made no action in government to deal with unnecessary or burdensome regulation, no action in government to make dealing with government and regulation simpler. There was a lot of carry on—I think Senator Hume said there was a $176 billion annual cost in terms of regulation and red tape in the economy. I'm not sure whether to take that on face value or not, but there are certainly costs associated with regulation. What you get from the other side is talk. What you get is sophistry. What you get is slogans. What you get are sentences that are a blizzard of words that are really about their own biases and prejudices as they talk to themselves, but they are never engaged with the action. What this government has done in its short period in office is grab hold of some of these issues. In terms of dealing with business, there is red tape and there is regulation. There is smart regulation. There is regulation that is designed to achieve its policy objective with the least cost to businesses and the best outcome for consumers and workers.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Henderson, please!

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the Albanese government we are moving from red tape for business to a red carpet for business. That's what we are doing. We are making effective reforms that mean workers and businesses and consumers can approach—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Gee, that was good. That was fun. I enjoyed every second of that.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm aware of that, Senator Ayres.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What they didn't like was the confidence with which we approach these issues. From red tape to red carpet—that's what it is all going to be about. It's good regulation that achieves its objective like this in financial services reform, environmental reform, law reform or—wait for it—industrial relations reform in the interests of workers and business, actually protecting and defending good businesses and closing loopholes. The that this piece of legislation in financial services and the government's agenda in industrial relations reform have in common can be encapsulated in two words: 'closing loopholes'.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sheldon, you have one minute.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Law Improvement Package No. 1) Bill 2023. I think the point my learned colleague was talking about was very fine—dealing with the red tape so we can have the red carpet out for business. I was just with businesses in the road transport industry, and small businesses, large businesses, owner-drivers and workers were turning around and saying they want to have a fair playing field. They want to have the red carpet out for those companies that do the right thing, look after their workforce and make sure that business can fairly compete, not the scoundrels who literally have people killed on our roads or are stealing money from workers.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Sheldon, you will be in continuation. I shall now proceed to senators' statements. With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in accordance with the informal arrangements for speaking times agreed by the whips.