Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Almost as old as Reagan—and even older, indeed. These laws go back to 1901. They have not been used. But, of course, here the coalition are championing these as big reforms saving large amounts of money et cetera. We see in the Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2014) Bill that, in terms of Defence, this repeals three acts which were redundant and amends another due to the repeal of a redundant act. It repeals an act that administered an agency in the employment area which was abolished in 1995. In finance, it once again has no financial impact. It repeals 12 older appropriation acts that have no effect as government agencies have already appropriated the funds. So you can see here that there has been a lot of bluster. There has been a lot of chest beating and a lot of claims made by the opposition, but today they have not delivered. Indeed, rather than a bonfire, we have seen, perhaps, a tiny bit of kindling—if that.

Buried in some of this absolute rubbish that we are hearing from the coalition, unfortunately, we have a couple nasty things. In particular, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the repeal of the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines, which were set up to regulate minimum pay and conditions of cleaners.

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