The Albanese Government’s reform agenda is about modernising our economy and maximising our opportunities to make our people, businesses and industries beneficiaries of the big changes underway in our society and our economy.
We’ll do this by building a more productive economy that creates more opportunities for more people in more parts of the country, not by just asking them to work longer for less.
We’ll make it more productive by renovating our competition settings; training and educating a more skilled and adaptable workforce; harnessing data and digital technology more effectively; delivering quality care more efficiently; and by investing in the clean energy transformation.
We’ll make our economy more productive by easing compliance costs on business where we can, as well, and that’s a key focus.
Today’s Business Summit hosted by the Australian Financial Review is a welcome opportunity to update business leaders and the broader community on four important new initiatives in this regard.
We will abolish hundreds of nuisance tariffs; clarify and improve the regulatory approvals process; provide some direction and certainty in the financial sector; and work towards a better way of assessing mergers and acquisitions.
These initiatives will reduce compliance costs, ease the burden on businesses, and make them more productive.
I’m particularly pleased with the progress we’ve made on tariffs.
Because of all the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes, we’ll be announcing the permanent abolition of almost five hundred nuisance tariffs on an array of imports from 1 July this year.
We will eliminate import tariffs on a wide range of imported goods including toothbrushes, hand tools, fridges, dishwashers, clothing, and menstrual and sanitary products.
This is the biggest unilateral tariff reform in at least two decades.
It will cut compliance costs, reduce red tape, make it easier to do business, and boost productivity.
As it stands, tariffs make these products more expensive and cost more to administer but do nothing to protect Australian businesses and workers because they apply to goods that often arrive under a concessional rate.
Australian workers and businesses are not protected by these tariffs, but they still have to navigate the red tape involved and bear the compliance costs and these are often passed on to consumers.
Removing these tariffs will streamline around $8.5 billion worth of annual trade and save businesses over $30 million in compliance costs each year, or over $120 million over the next four years.
What we’re doing here will simplify the system, reduce costs, improve supply chain resilience and make it easier and cheaper for business.
Nuisance tariffs strangle productivity and weigh business down in red tape with very little return, which is why we’re eliminating almost 500 of them.
I will also outline the Government’s efforts to improve and streamline a range of regulatory approvals and cut costs – by improving the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation process and making sensible changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.
We understand and value the contribution the mining and resources sector makes to our national economy and our changes will strengthen this sector.
We will provide more funding to accelerate approvals through better use of data – meaning better, faster decision making and clear priorities without cutting corners on environmental protection.
We will clarify consultation requirements for offshore oil and gas storage approvals, making consultation more targeted and effective and provide better upfront guidance on when approvals are required so proponents know if their project needs to go through the process.
These reforms will deliver better environmental and economic outcomes.
I’ll also outline our plans to make the regulatory regime clearer for our banks, particularly medium‑sized and smaller players, by introducing a financial sector regulatory initiatives grid to make sure the standard business of regulation is carried out in a more coordinated and coherent way.
The grid will provide transparency around the regulatory landscape for the financial sector, giving greater certainty to industry to support engagement with proposed reforms and their implementation.
It will help financial services businesses engage with the Government and regulators more effectively and allow entities to allocate their resources more efficiently when implementing regulation – reducing compliance burden and costs.
We also want to make our mergers regime simpler, faster and more transparent by streamlining legal pathways, allowing low risk mergers to proceed quickly and by providing a more comprehensive picture of the mergers happening in our economy.
We want to take a take balanced approach to merger clearance – one that promotes competition, protects consumers, reduces approval times and costs for businesses, while bringing us in line with our international peers, and that’s what we’ll look to do when we consider the feedback we’ve received during the consultation we’ve done.
Across all four reform areas I’m outlining today – nuisance tariffs, approvals processes, financial regulation, and mergers and acquisitions – we’re methodically working to rebuild the productivity, competitiveness and dynamism of Australia’s economy by getting compliance costs down.
This is all about maximising and not just managing the opportunities on offer in the defining decade ahead, for the benefit of our workers and businesses, our communities and our economy.