Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker, I got awfully distracted by this whole affair. Back to the bill, the bill in question, the omnibus repeal bill, which I am very, very happy to address. This is part of the government's ongoing deregulation agenda, and it is important that twice a year we have deregulation. It is common in the United States of America, where many statutes and other laws will expire with people leaving office. They will expire automatically. They have many mechanisms to reduce and remove the amount of red tape, laws and regulation in America. However, here in Australia we have not had mechanisms like this that are regular, thorough, complete, that ensure that constantly we remove inactive legislation and regulation that is of no effect that brings the total net regulatory burden down.

Of course we know that the total regulatory reduction in savings for individuals, businesses and the not-for-profit sector will be something in the order of $2.1 billion. It is not about spelling, it is not about a few dollars and cents. It is about $2.1 billion of savings for the individuals, businesses and the not-for-profit sector. It is actually double the target that we have set. You will find in this bill in particular, as well as the repeals of redundant provisions in the acts that are going, the streamlining of many processes. We are also abolishing three bodies in this bill: the Fishing Industry Policy Council, the Product Stewardship Advisory Group and the Oil Stewardship Advisory Council. Getting rid of all these bodies federally—we do not know how many there are, we do not know what they do—is a good thing to do. It is good to downsize the role of government in our society.

On coming to office the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance asked, 'How many Commonwealth government bodies are there?' It sounds like a simple question; for anyone listening you would think there would be a simple answer. Maybe it would take a period of time to get an answer. How many Commonwealth government agencies does the Commonwealth government administer? The bottom line is that they cannot get a proper answer about how many bodies the Commonwealth government administers. That is how disorganised and how large the Commonwealth government has become: we cannot even identify the number of bodies that we are responsible for. So repealing these three bodies is yet another part, and we are going to be going through more government agencies to reduce the number of committees, bodies and things that we do not need; things that we do not need the government to be involved in or where there are duplicate services available at state level or duplicate services available at other layers of government.

We know, of course, that many of these things are duplicated at state level. The introduction of one-stop shops for environmental approvals is perhaps one of the biggest changes in the way our Commonwealth, our federation, does business in this country.

One of the most significant problems that we have had as a society has been the knock back of huge amounts of investment, including in states like South Australia, which lost a massive uranium mine because of the overregulation of state and federal governments. There is the time taken when you apply for environmental approvals. There are the multilayers of environmental approvals. There is the reluctance of certain governments to approve big projects, even though they are to the great benefit of their state or the Commonwealth. The one-stop-shop process will ensure that we have better and more streamlined approvals.

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