Page 325 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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are working hard. I recall that Prime Minister Gillard was very well known for accrediting her government with success based on the number of laws passed. Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor boasted that more than 550 pieces of legislation were passed by the minority parliament. It is true that Prime Minister Gillard had a difficult parliament to work with. However, the functionality of the law-making process does not mean a successful government; it only means governance is occurring.
In conclusion, laws are no better than the people thinking them up. We in here are not a superior race of people. As a result, we should consider very carefully all new legislation, as being worthy of serious testing as to whether or not it is necessary. Will it have the consequences it intends or is it vexatious, silly or poorly thought through? Bad laws should be removed out of respect for the human freedom of those we represent—those human freedoms which are precious and not for others to take away lightly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.22): I thank Mrs Jones for raising this important issue today. I think there is probably one thing that everyone in this place is unanimous on—that we do not need unnecessary regulation. What we do not all agree on is what exactly is unnecessary. Mrs Jones has ably demonstrated this in her remarks.
The Greens think that regulating things like safe road rules, fair workers’ pay and conditions and making workplaces safe is necessary and that they require regulation. We also think that regulating to create cleaner waterways and creating a taxation system that requires accountability on greenhouse emissions is fair.
We have just had quite a dissertation on how requiring the clean-up of shopping trolleys in our suburbs is a constraint on freedom. I can report, from the letters that constituents write to me, that people really appreciate the fact that these things are no longer a blight in the suburbs and a hazard on cycle paths. The Canberra Liberals seem to want to restrict regulations to removing pigeon poo from awnings, regulating what can be used to make lines on football fields and controlling which performances will be allowed at fringe festivals.
The corollary of Mrs Jones’s MPI today is the importance of retaining necessary laws and necessary regulations. Given the federal government’s stated intention of scrapping the price on carbon pollution, there is no better time to remind my colleagues here of the importance of retaining necessary laws and regulations. The human population of our planet is currently consuming resources and producing pollution at a rate that is impacting the biosphere so strongly that it is compromising the planet’s ability to sustain life. The possibility of ecological collapse is so serious a problem that it should be keeping policymakers awake at night. Given that market economics is currently the dominant philosophy in our society, a market response to the problem has been trialled through the national price on carbon pollution. The carbon price was never going to be a silver bullet to all of our environmental problems, but for our fragile blue planet it was a small step in the right direction. The carbon price is necessary law. It is necessary regulation. I would urge Mrs Jones to contact her federal colleagues and suggest that very point to them.
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