Michael Sukkar MP

Treasury Legislation Amendment (Repeal Day) Bill 2014

It gives me great pleasure to rise and talk on the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Repeal Day) Bill 2014, if for no other reason than that the member for Moreton has ceased that tirade. To the members of the public in the gallery, I apologise, because what you have seen is the worst example of Australian politics. If you were up there in the gallery, drifting in and out of consciousness as that tirade went on, you would have been convinced that the member for Moreton would end his contribution by saying, ‘And I oppose this bill, because it is so bad, and I’ve spent 15 minutes talking about how bad this bill is.’ But no: he will support this bill. You heard 15 minutes of a contribution on a bill that he supports, believe it or not.

Mr Tudge: Imagine if he disliked it!

Mr SUKKAR: Yes, imagine if he disliked it. I tell you what, he has fire in the belly. But I say to all members of the public in the gallery, thanks for hanging in there. What we saw from the member for Moreton was a continuation of Labor’s denial: the denial that over their six years of government we saw a budgetary position that is now a ruinous position—the words of Wayne Swan, It was a government that said, ‘We did for small business what no government has done before’. All they did was increase the number of regulations by 21,000. But there was nothing wrong with that; nothing to see here! In the world view of the member for Moreton, or the view of those last six years, there is nothing to see here: ‘We were a great government, and there were no problems.’

So, fundamentally, it is an example of the Labor Party just not learning their lesson. The member for Moreton also said that today’s bill and all the repeal days are just a matter of turning up for work today, and this is what governments do. Does he not see the great irony when he says that—that the clear inference is that for six years the Rudd, Gillard, and Rudd governments did not turn up for work, and did not do what governments are supposed to do? If that was the case, why did the number of regulations increase by 21,000, strangling small businesses in this country? Every time he says that there is no problem, that there is nothing to see here, he absolutely condemns all the small-business owners in my electorate who have said to me that for many years—and it got so much worse under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments—they have been strangled in regulation and costly red tape.

Having grown up in a small-business family myself, I saw firsthand the costs of red tape. It is not just a theoretical exercise that we discuss in this House. My parents and I have very vivid memories of me growing up and seeing my parents sitting at their desks filling out paperwork until all hours of the night. They would be at work during the day. At six o’clock in the morning they would get up and go to work. They would get home at probably seven or eight o’clock at night, try to enjoy some time with the family and then get started on the paperwork at 10 or 11 o’clock for a couple of hours. This has a real impact on people’s lives. So, when the member for Moreton, the member for Fraser and the member for Isaacs sit there whingeing and moaning about today’s bill and then vote for it, that suggests to me that they have no understanding of small business and no desire to engage with the government on this task that we are trying to achieve—for the first time in many decades, to actually reduce the regulatory burden that the Australian government imposes on our citizens. And I am not so surprised to see it from the member for Fraser and the member for Isaacs—two academic, bookworm types who probably have absolutely no idea about small business. But I think I expected a bit more from the member for Moreton, and unfortunately I was left wanting.

But I do want to get to explaining some of the substance of the bill in front of us—the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Repeal Day) Bill 2014, which implements a range of improvements to Australia’s laws and, as we have been talking about, removes costly and unnecessary red tape. The government does recognise that while some degree of regulation is of course necessary, bad regulation and too much regulation hurts productivity and deters innovation and investment, and that ultimately costs jobs. There is a real-life dimension to the issues we are discussing today. The member for Fraser, in a sort of nasty, snide way, had a go at us for our coalition deregulatory task force, which I am a member of and which is ably led by my friend the member for Kooyong. The whole purpose of the coalition’s deregulatory task force, of which I was the Victorian member, was to give members of parliament an opportunity to bring real-life examples from our electorates—on the frontline, not theoretical examples or examples from peak bodies, but examples of where the interface between a small business and government is causing issues for constituents of ours. I found the process extraordinarily worthwhile, and a number of fantastic outcomes have been achieved by that task force. So, I want to again congratulate the member for Kooyong for leading that. It was a privilege to be a part of it. But it is a whole-of-government approach. Our task force was quite a minute part of that.

We have set up in every department specific deregulation teams to search for those deregulatory changes that we can make in each and every portfolio. This led to our holding of the first two repeal days. We said before the election that we would repeal $1 billion of red tape each year. After our second 2014 repeal day, a net reduction of $2.1 billion in compliance costs was achieved. There is quite a complex process in determining that $2.1 billion reduction, but the benefits of a $2.1 billion reduction in red tape flow into many, many billions of dollars. The multiplier effect is quite phenomenal.

Ultimately, we want to make it easier for businesses and individuals to get on and spend their precious energy on what they do best, and that is improving their bottom lines, creating a better life for their families and also creating more jobs. Particularly in the small business sector, I can tell you now that employees are more like family than employees. There is nothing better than a small business that can have their employees grow with them, develop with them and, hopefully, share in the spoils of a successful small business.

If this bill helps that process in any way, I think in this House it would be much more gracious of people like the member for Moreton, who is a friend of mine, to get up and say, ‘I support this bill and I support it for these reasons.’ If he only talks for a couple of minutes, that is fine—talk for two minutes—but to go on a 15-minute tirade, absolutely pillorying the bill, and then conclude by saying, ‘And I commend the bill to the House,’ is embarrassing. It is the worst feature of Australian politics. I remember when I was a private citizen observing Australian politics. You would sort of sit there and you would want to grab the TV screen and say, ‘Just say you agree with this.’ There is enough going on in this House that members opposite can get an opportunity to try and whack us on, but, where we agree, let’s just agree and move on. I think it was a very ungracious contribution.

The bill before us contains a number of features that other speakers have gone into much more detail on than I will, but for completeness I want to cover off on them. Schedule 1 repeals the pay-slip reporting provisions in the SI(S) Act that increase the regulatory burden on employers beyond what is currently imposed under the Fair Work legislation. The changes, which have been spoken about by other members, remove some duplication in reporting what superannuation contributions have been made. It is relatively uncontroversial and makes sense. Schedule 2 to the bill is something that is quite close to my heart. It contains a range of changes that simplify the tax laws by consolidating duplicated tax administration provisions and it also bundles a whole lot of tax acts into a single set of provisions. I was one of those unfortunate people in the tax profession, in my former life as a tax lawyer, trying to juggle a half a dozen different acts with certain provisions that were cross-referenced into an entirely different act. If you had put all of the tax acts that I had to deal with on a daily basis on a set of scales, they would have weighed something like six or eight kilos. It is quite extraordinary. So anything we can do to achieve what I hope is the ultimate outcome of a single tax act—the process was started in the mid-nineties and we sort of got half the way there but never actually concluded it—is good news. Schedule 2 is definitely a standout feature of this bill for me.

Schedule 3 to the bill amends the Financial Sector (Shareholdings) Act by making some sensible changes around associate tests and reporting for associates who may or may not have an interest in a company. These sorts of associate tests are often there for really good reasons, to ensure that we avoid collusion and conflicts of interest, but here I am quite convinced that the changes proposed will not end up with a diminution of any protections; they just remove quite a redundant rule. Schedule 4 rewrites the definition of Australia into a single location in the tax law. Over the last few weeks, I have heard lots of members opposite deriding this change. We should not overstate it, but I can tell you right now that having multiple definitions in different tax acts cross-referenced against each other is extraordinarily difficult for any type of understanding of the tax law. I dealt with small businesses, medium-sized businesses and large businesses on a very regular basis. Anything we can do to make the tax affairs of Australian taxpayers easier should be applauded in this House and should not be derided. So I think rewriting the current definition of Australia is outstanding.

I want to conclude by saying that I think our approach here is working. When we discuss legislation like this and when we have our repeal days, we are saying to the public, ‘We have a determination from the Prime Minister down to the humblest backbencher to make your lives easier in any way we can.’ I welcomed the words of Jennifer Westacott, the CEO of the Business Council of Australia, who put it quite succinctly: ‘Finally, we have reached a turning point in dealing with the high costs and inefficiencies faced by business and individuals in Australia every single day.’ I think that is right. For too many years now we have accepted that a new government or a new minister want to put their touch on a particular policy area, and so we just pile on more regulations. In contrast, this government has said, ‘We want to get out of your lives to the greatest extent possible.’ We are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remove necessary regulations for protections of our citizens, but we do not want to wedge ourselves into your life where it is unnecessary. So I say to my electorate, the people of Deakin, that, whilst this is not particularly sexy stuff, I can assure you that we are doing the hard work behind the scenes to make your life easier, to make it easier for you to grow your businesses and employment opportunities for your employees, which will hopefully mean greater opportunities for your children as well. I commend the bill to the House and again congratulate everybody for their wonderful work in this space.