Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): I wonder if this Government ever gets tired of simping for the big corporates and the 1 percent because assuming that getting rid of a disclosure regime on late payments will actually do anything but simply benefit those who are already creaming it at the top is an illusion. Let's just be clear that what this Government is doing is simply making it easier for the big corporates to get away with and not be held accountable for late payments to those smaller business. It's interesting because in practice with what the Government's been doing throughout the term this has been a Government of just moving us backwards repealing pieces of legislation and offering no substantive alternatives. If I go back to the Business Payment Practices Bill's second reading the debate on the Act that we're now repealing the Minister at that time talked about—and I quote—We recognise that businesses need to have prompt payments" but he also said he didn't think this was a solution. Fine! If he thinks that big businesses need to have prompt payments and then all he is presenting to us is repealing the disclosure regime that we have and not offering alternatives he needs to be upfront to the community that all he actually wants to do is make it easier for those big businesses. There are real economic costs to our communities and to small businesses as a result of these late payments. Let's make it clear that actually all that the status quo has enabled is accumulation of wealth at the top at the expense of everybody else and yes this includes the petite bourgeoisie that in theory capitalism is supposed to support. But in practice all that we are seeing is a continuous accumulation of resources and this Government is enabling it. So the Green Party won't be supporting this bill simply by nature of the fact that it is just repealing a disclosure regime that could have been improved when the Government is offering no alternative and at the same time for a Minister that during the previous bill was complaining and calling on the previous Minister to get out and talk to people on the street he seems really afraid of actually getting feedback around the repeal that he is putting forward. He's actually afraid of going through a select committee process and getting feedback from the smaller businesses and the workers because if we look at the departmental disclosure statement it's so clear that there was no adequate stakeholder consultation as part of the creation of this repeal. So he's just going off vibes. He's going off vibes and an ideology that will benefit those at the top. It's interesting that the speakers on the Government side talk about how they really worry about all the additional costs and compliance mechanisms that they have to go through but then they have to caveat it with all businesses including big corporates because actually this bill only added a disclosure regime to those at the very top. Let's make it clear that actually this is not about supporting all businesses; it's about supporting those businesses that already have the resources and that benefit from withholding prompt payments.At the time of the second reading debate on the previous bill the Minister also talked about what he thought the biggest issue at the time for him was: "The biggest issue is its focus on large companies."—so he said it himself. The focus isn't broad compliance mechanisms; it's the fact that big businesses were being targeted by this legislation. These are the Minister's own words and then he tried to deflect at the time. He said that actually in his view Government departments were some of the biggest culprits in late payments—OK fine. If he thinks that more work needs to be done in ensuring that Government departments are prompt with their payments he could be initiating work to actually address that.Hon Andrew Bayly: I have—I have.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: But he could be presenting a bill rather than wasting our time in this place simply simping for big businesses. If the Minister is so confident that he is doing the work on this he could actually be introducing bills and having us do bills around this. So let's make it really clear: all this Government wants to do in this bill is repeal a disclosure regime that would have actually created accountability mechanisms and at the same time I want to peg it back to the fact that he had an opportunity to improve the regime rather than scrapping it and benefiting those at the top."