QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:45): Thank you to the honourable member for her interest in this important topic. On the last part of her question, Katy Gallagher is the minister for better regulation, and I'm proud to support her work. In fact, the whole cabinet is engaged in one way or another in this important task of economic reform, particularly when it comes to better regulation.

As part of that I also give a shout-out to the Assistant Treasurer and the Assistant Minister to the Treasury for the work they do. The Assistant Treasurer gave a wonderful speech today at the National Press Club about some important issues. I thank the honourable member for her question for a number of reasons, but partly because I acknowledge the important contribution she made to the Economic Reform Roundtable, which began a year ago today; today is its one-year anniversary.

That roundtable brought together a whole bunch of people to shape the economic future of this country. This government has delivered more economic reform in the years since that roundtable than was delivered in the quarter of a century that preceded it. That reform was really important because it helped shape an ambitious tax reform agenda, the broadest productivity agenda and the most net savings in a budget in a generation.

Better regulation was important to all three of those objectives. When it comes to targets, the budget made it clear that our objective here, our expectation here, is that the combination of our efforts on regulation will cut compliance costs in our economy by more than $10 billion a year, and almost a tenth of that is in the financial sector alone. So, whether it's the omnibus bill that we passed on regulatory reform, whether it's the way we've changed the statement of expectations for our regulators, whether it's the Better Regulation Roadmap through the Council of Financial Regulators, whether it's the steps we're taking with the states on national competition policy—and I acknowledge that it's Assistant Minister Leigh in that regard—whether it's abolishing nuisance tariffs, whether it's speeding up approvals, whether it's fast-tracking housing approvals in particular, and I acknowledge the housing minister and the environment minister, or whether it's streamlining the construction code, there are a whole bunch of steps the government is taking to meet the kinds of objectives the honourable member has asked me about.

The honourable member also asked me whether there's more work to do. Of course there is. When it comes to better regulation, there's not a destination here; it requires ongoing work.

But in the years since the Economic Reform Roundtable we've shown a willingness right across the cabinet, right across the government, to cut compliance costs where we can, to make sure regulation is serving a useful purpose, because we acknowledge, as the honourable member does, just how important this is to turning around a couple of decades of poor productivity performance in our economy.