Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2014) Bill 2014. If we are going to support this bill then the Australian public really does need to understand fully just what the government is doing here with the bill we are presented with today.

During the election campaign the then opposition made great fanfare of its commitment to reducing what it alleged were masses of red and green tape. All we heard in the lead up to the election was that was what they were going to do. Indeed, in the first few months of the Abbott government, most MPs', senators' and ministers' speeches were peppered with the need to reduce red and green tape. It was almost as if there was no getting away from it whether it was a Senate inquiry or, indeed, in this place here. All of the speeches were about this massive need to repeal red and green tape. We did hear those words over and over.

Whether or not there really is an abundance of so-called red and green tape to be repealed remains to be seen. But really, shouldn't the government be bit more creative? Shouldn't it be committing to improving the lives of Australians through bold and brave initiatives? Shouldn't our national government be able to paint a vision for Australian voters where everyone feels valued, where everyone feels they are respected and acknowledged for the contribution they make, no matter how big or how small that contribution is? And shouldn't those who need a helping hand either from the government, from their employer or from agencies in the community have an expectation that this helping hand will be there?

That is not the vision of this national government. Instead we have a government that focuses its attentions on red and green tape, stating quite believably that there will be some great economic benefit once this unnecessary layer of bureaucracy is removed. I say to Australian voters, do not hold your breath. It is a government of broken promises, and I am yet to see any detail about how this removal of this mass of red and green tape will really impact the lives of Australian business and, indeed, individuals in our community generally.

What now? I have to say, the references to red and green tape has kind of tapered off. For the past couple of months, the government has been almost silent on its red and green tape agenda. It certainly has not been mentioned in this place. Indeed, at Senate inquiries when we have seen change for change's sake, which in the past has been attributed to red and green tape, that reference by departments and government ministers is missing. Why is that? It is because this bill really does not do anything. In terms of timeliness, the government has well and truly dragged its feet on this repeal. So I guess, if it does have some impact that I am missing, that I cannot see and if it does have an impact on improving regulatory burden for business and for individuals and for the community—as the explanatory memorandum tells us that it does—they have been waiting a very long time to see that impact.

Fancy making an election commitment to repeal redundant and spent acts. Seriously, is that the best they could do when in opposition? Does it not just spell out that the Abbott government has no new ideas, no vision and that it spends its time and the time of this parliament on bills which deliver very little? Further, for the government to create such fanfare around repeal demonstrates its complete lack of vision. In fact, this government has spent its first year in government repealing bills. Unfortunately most of the other bills it has repealed have had a real impact, a negative impact, on the lives of ordinary Australians.

We saw yesterday right across the country thousands and thousands—and in Melbourne 30,000 ordinary Australians—of individuals and community organisations come out and let the government know in no uncertain terms that they want action on climate change. Where is the government today? We are here talking about repealing redundant acts and other pieces of legislation. It has repealed Labor's carbon initiatives and it did it proudly, but we can see by the demonstrations in our streets across the country in capital cities and in small towns that that was not well received by Australian voters.

Careful scrutiny of the last repeal bill shows us that these are not all redundant pieces of legislation and acts. In a broad sweep in its last cleaning up of red and green tape, the government did actually impact the lives of ordinary Australians in a very negative way. The savings, if there are any, will be miserly amounts and those savings will be to the government itself, certainly not to businesses.

In their last sweep through, the government reduced the take-home pay of cleaners—cleaners working in this building; cleaners cleaning their offices and other offices and other buildings owned by the Commonwealth. The Abbott government repealed the cleaning services guidelines. Those guidelines guaranteed that cleaners' wages would not change on contract change. The government can dress it up however they like, but that is what they did. When the minister had the opportunity to not go ahead with the change, he went ahead with it anyway—and he did so sneakily. So every time a cleaning contract in a Commonwealth owned building changes, cleaners' wages are up for negotiation. That is the truth. That is a fact. These contracts change every couple of years. So a cleaner who might have worked in Parliament House or in another Commonwealth owned building for five, 10, 15 or 20 years will have seen many, many different employers over the course of their working every day in that Commonwealth owned building.

My experience as a former union official who negotiated with those contractors is that, unfortunately, the contracts usually go to the cheapest bid. One of the sure ways of reducing costs is to reduce the wages bill. Contractors do that in a number of ways. They increase the workload of cleaners—and the cleaning guidelines created some certainty around that, so that cleaners' workloads would not be unreasonably increased—and, if the cleaners are earning above award rates of pay, they reduce the pay to the award level. For cleaners, that is a difference of $2 or $3 an hour. If the government took the time to investigate—or, indeed, if the government cared—they would soon discover this fact for themselves.

When Labor were in government, we put in place a system where wages could not be negotiated down at contract change and we put in place a fair system that guaranteed cleaners certainty around their hourly rate of pay. That in turn gave certainty to employers, to contracting companies, around their tenders and it meant that they had to actually compete on issues of quality and how they would do the job—for example, what sort of supervision they would put in. They were not able to run their contracts by reducing cleaners' wages or increasing the workload. That was actually a win-win for cleaners and their bosses.

But, of course, this government did not see this or did not want to see it and claim that there is some cost saving for contractors—but there is not. Those contractors who want to do the right thing by their cleaners and pay a higher rate of pay will be penalised for doing so. They will be priced out of the market. They will not be able to compete with those contractors who are paying the award rate. That is what the last repeal did. It created hardship for individuals—in this case, cleaners—and the government, who had an opportunity not to repeal those guidelines, simply went ahead in the full knowledge that cleaners' take-home wages would be reduced. They went ahead with that knowledge and did it anyway—and that was a shameful thing to do.

It is not as if when Labor were in office we did not clean up redundant acts and reduce regulatory burden; of course we did. But we did not inflate the importance of these repeals with the fanfare we have seen from this government. We did not do that. The only thing the government stopped short of was calling a national holiday to celebrate their repeal day—so big was the hype around these repeals. We had a lead-up, we had a countdown and we had some kind of massive celebration here on the day that the first omnibus repeal bills were introduced. I, along with other Labor senators in this place, would like to know how much time and how much money was spent on this kind of absolutely unnecessary hype.

But I return to the current bill—a great fuss about nothing. What the government is really doing is spruiking up it election commitment. It is a lot of ideology masking as legislation. It is another way to give itself a tick on meeting its election commitments. That is what the government is doing here. That is what is going on with this repeal bill.

Meanwhile, Australians are still waiting for housing policy. They are still waiting to know what is happening on the homelessness front. Just this morning our office here in Canberra had a call from a woman who is homeless. Along with her teenage daughter, they have experienced homelessness on and off over the past few years—because it is such a tight situation when trying to find decent accommodation. That is the reality for this woman who called us this morning. Unfortunately and sadly, this woman and her teenage daughter, who are currently in New South Wales, will continue to wait, because the Abbott government not only is focused on irrelevant pieces of legislation such as this bill but also still has no housing policy, after 12 months in office. Further, the government has reduced the amount of funding available to make housing affordability realistic. There is no money for capital investment.

So, despite the claim that this bill will assist individuals, it will do nothing for the woman who called us this morning expressing her frustration at not being able to be housed anywhere. How disgraceful! I am sure that those in the Abbott government will start to say, as they do with education, 'Oh, it's not our responsibility; it is up to the states.' And after 12 months without one skerrick of policy on housing affordability or homelessness, that is obviously what the government wants to say to the states in this area—'It's not our responsibility; we don't build the houses for those who are not able to afford a roof over their heads for themselves.'

What are we doing here today? We are repealing legislation which has no impact. Labor senators have made the point and we will continue to make the point because it is really important that Australian voters appreciate what the government thinks should be debated in this place. We need it on the public record: what is at stake here is absolutely nothing—old, redundant legislation. Why are we doing it? We are doing it for the sake of spin, so that the Prime Minister of the country can get up at his next important address and say, 'We have reduced red and green tape in this country,' but there will be no detail about what sort of money will come back to government in doing that. I would like to know what the impact on business will be. I am still waiting to hear about that. I heard a government speaker talk about floating the dollar and somehow went on to reducing red and green tape. Let me assure the voting public: floating the Australian dollar, which was a Labor initiative, has nothing to do with reducing red and green tape. I am not quite sure how that ended up in the same sentence, but it does show how desperate the government is to try and make this seem something more than it is, by trying to link those two thoughts.

So, it is old, redundant legislation. We are doing it for the sake of spin. Why? Because the government is in serious trouble with its budget. It is a budget that the community says has failed. What an interesting last week. I still cannot quite believe that it is true. Did the Prime Minister seriously give his ministers As and A-pluses for performance? For what? For producing a budget that affects almost every person in the community in a negative way, except the big end of town, because we know they are the government's mates. Thousands and thousands of Australians in our capital cities and regional centres took to the streets yesterday to let the government know, well and truly and loudly, that they do not like what the government has done on carbon, and somehow we have ministers getting As and A-pluses. Australian voters are not fooled, because they have given the government a fail on every aspect of its budget. That is why the government is intent on talking about a repeal bill—repealing stuff from the 1920s. So, let's not talk about your harsh and cruel budget; let's not talk about the effect on pensioners, on school kids, on Australian families, and the no savings to be had from electricity companies. Luckily the government could not control them. I got a letter the other day that told me I am saving something like $48 a year, and yet I was promised $550.

We are here today talking about the omnibus legislation because the government does not want to talk about its harsh and cruel budget—a budget which creates hardship for almost everyone in the community, and yet what does the government focus on? Repealing old legislation. Why does it do that? Because it does not know what else to do. Instead of putting its hand on its heart and saying, 'We got it wrong. We're an inexperienced government. Give us a fair go. We've only been around for a year. We don't quite get it. We went too far with the budget. Let's look at how we might fix it.' No. Instead, we are focusing on repealing stuff which has no effect on anything. It is a government without a vision; it is a government without a forward thought; and it is a government that knows its budget has failed, which is why it wants to focus on red and green tape.

One of the other points I heard this morning from a government senator was about how the government has linked the performance pay of its senior public servants to reducing red and green tape. At the same time, the government refuses to negotiate with public servants around their enterprise bargaining agreement—the government which likes to just poke sticks at the Community and Public Sector Union and somehow blame them, saying that they are being irresponsible. A four-per-cent-a-year wage claim is a reasonable claim and yet the government wants to put zero on the table. Again, making that link and ignoring negotiation needs—not negotiating with the union around pay and conditions—show that the government is completely out of touch.

Labor will obviously reform areas that need reforming, but we will not do it with fanfare and we will not do it to the detriment of other really important issues, such as the government's inability to talk about its budget.