Page 3551 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
nothing. And that is not saying much. After 13 years in office, if we measure the amount of legislation that this government has put in place, what is happening today is paltry in comparison to what it has done. It is a shame that it is being lauded as some sort of achievement because if it was really interested in getting rid of red tape, it would have been doing a lot more a lot earlier than this.
The bill today will amend the Casino Control Act, the fair trading and gaming machine acts, the Hawkers Act, the Magistrates Court Act, the Fair Trading (Motor Vehicle Repair Industry) Act, the Magistrates Court (Fair Trading Motor Vehicle Infringement Notices) Regulation, the Magistrates Court (Sale of Motor Vehicles Infringement Notices) Regulation, the Pawnbrokers Act, the Planning and Development Regulation, the Public Unleased Land Act, the Race and Sports Bookmaking Act, the Registration of Deeds Act, the Sale of Motor Vehicles Act, the Second-hand Dealers Act, the Security Industry Act, and the Tobacco Act. When you read them out like that, it might even sound a bit impressive, but really what you have here is just simple tinkering.
We need to go back to where the Treasurer started. In September last year the Treasurer stood up in this chamber and announced proudly:
The red tape reduction panel, which I chair—
so this is all the Treasurer’s work; he has been busy, and here we are 13 months later—
has overseen the abolition of registration labels for light vehicles, has increased the majority of business licences to a three-year maximum term and is reviewing police checking and business signage processes. In addition we have established the fix my red tape website to allow businesses to bring red-tape issues to the government’s attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Who would have thought it? The truth is that here we are in the mid-term of this Assembly and, while having an announcement that it will reduce red tape, this is a bill that does not go far enough. This bill and the previous initiatives amount to the government doing nothing more than tweaking the red tape they have put in place over the last 13 years.
If you look at what is happening in the main list of bills in the amendment—the list of bills that I read out—you will see that it is about easing the notice that you have to give people of the licence. In the case of the casino and the Gaming Machine Act you have to have your licence up in one spot instead of in all spots for the gaming rules. For hawkers, you have to have your licence in your pocket instead of having it on display. It is not a serious attempt. If this is all they can find then they are clearly a government that have run out of puff.
I will give a bit of history. In fact given that the Treasurer’s first red tape reduction announcement was to get rid of rego stickers, in the lead-up to last year’s election, Madam Deputy Speaker, you really have to question whether Mr Barr even knows what red tape is. He has been talking about these red tape initiatives since the beginning of this term. He tabled this bill during this year, and here we are debating it now.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video