CCBR Business Review

18 CONTINUED ON PAGE 19 B U S I N E S S T I P S REGULATION DETERMINES WHEN a business can open, what they can sell, the services they can provide and opportuni- ties to grow and invest. When the Prime Minister asked me to take on the Morrison Government’s Deregulation Agenda, I jumped at it because of my own experi- ence and that of my parents who had suc- cessfully run their own family businesses in Wyong NSW Deregulation Agenda. As I revealed at Australia’s inaugural Regulatory Reform Conference last month, our Deregulation Agenda is expected to deliver benefits of over $21 billion over the decade. Good deregulation means removing duplication. We know from talking to businesses, they want to comply with regulation, but they only want to do it once. And fair enough, too. We have numerous regulators at differ- ent levels of government monitoring the same businesses and mandating the same information from them in different ways. Rather than talking to each other, they push the burden onto business to resub- mit the same data over and over again. Creating duplicated efforts, wasted time and lost revenue. Imposing duplicative standards on busi- nesses doesn’t help anyone; it just jacks up prices for consumers and wastes businesses’ valuable time. In February my Ministerial colleagues and I announced more cross-government com- mon sense changes that will cut red tape and save time and money for hundreds of thousands of businesses. We’re changing laws to allow the use of trusted overseas product safety and information standards in Australia. We estimate this will save Australian businesses $136 million every year and improve safety for Australians and their families. My long-held view is that our starting point should be not to regulate. Instead we should take a hard look at regulations to ensure they’re justified and minimise burdens. When we talk about deregulation, we don’t mean no regulation, we mean well-designed, well-targeted and well- implemented regulation. We want to free businesses from the barriers, blockages and bottlenecks that put undue obstacles in their way. We’re taking advantage of technological solutions to make it easier for businesses to meet their requirements. We have commit- ted $2.8 million to digitise legal documents making it easier and quicker for individuals and businesses to communicate with each other. We have also invested in a range of tech- nologies that make it easier, cheaper and quicker for businesses to comply with a range reporting requirements. This includes $48 million to make it easier for industry to seek environment approv- als for major developments, $20 million to slash time for up to 55,000 small and medium businesses lodging mandatory reporting, and $33 million to help farmers and businesses wanting to participate in the carbon market. Because deregulation is not just for business. We are working with States and Territories to make it easier for tradies and licensed professionals including teachers, architects and real estate agents to work where the work is. Almost all States and Territories have amended laws to remove the need for licensed workers to apply and pay for additional licences to work in differ- ent States and Territories. I am pleased WA is set to pass its own law by July. Some fly-in, fly-out workers have wallets packed with different licences just to do their job. Many others simply don’t bother to take up work interstate. Our reform has worked, not by having a national licence, not by trying to harmonise or align State rules, but to replace them with a description of accountability and transparency. We shifted the focus on the needs of businesses while ensuring we continue to keep workers and the community pro- tected. We estimate this will benefit 168,000 workers each year and add about $2.4 bil- lion to the economy over 10 years. While I was pleased to see the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, recently speak about deregulation, it was quite disingenuous. Labor were not supportive of these reforms. Instead, they voted in support of the Greens who tried to destroy them. Imagine the lost opportunity if they were successful. Mr Albanese claimed Labor would deliver Feds cutting red tape for business By The Hon Ben Morton MP Minister Assisting the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Minister for the Public Service, Special Minister of State Initiatives that will see a reduction in the sea of regulations imposed on them by governments at all levels. The folly of the Labor’s policy to abol- ish the construction watchdog has been highlighted by a significant High Court decision. The decision of the High Court to overturn a Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia is a significant relief for the nation’s $210 billion building and construction sector and brings to an end attempt to erase from his- tory countless examples of bullying, intimidation and other illegal behav- iour demonstrated by the CFMEU and other construction unions for decades. Denita Wawn, CEO of Master Builders Australia said, “This is a huge relief for our industry and means that the horrific track record of building unions will be relevant when courts consider penalties for future breaches.” “Construction unions have a long and sorry history of law breaking, particularly right of entry, misrepre- sentation and anti-coercion, which far exceeds any other union. This case means that record won’t be erased from history and remains relevant,” she said. “Over the last 5 or so years, the ABCC has succeeded in around 98 of 107 cases in the Courts, which result- ed in around $16 million in penalties of penalties for breaches of the law by building unions. Over $14.5 million of these penalties were imposed on the CFMMEU for well over 1600 separate contraventions of workplace laws,” Denita Wawn said . “To say that a track record like that isn’t relevant misses the point of why we have the ABCC and why it must be retained,” she said. “The High Court decision has backed the reason why we need the ABCC – to ensure that penalties can determined in a way that stops the continuation of the CFMMEU’s his- tory of non-compliance with the law, by making it something that is too expensive to maintain” “The ALP has promised to that the ABCC will be abolished if there is a change of Government and this deci- sion should hopefully make them reconsider. We are an essential part of economic recovery, so they need to tell the 400,000+ businesses and almost 1.2 million workers we employ what their plans are to stop lawbreak- ing in our industry.” High Court sees through CFEMU attempt to erase shameful record of law breaking CENTRAL COAST BUSINESS REVIEW MAY 2022