Labor and the Greens have teamed up to ram through new mandatory disclosure laws which impose an unacceptable compliance burden on the Australian economy.
Treasury analysis confirms these changes impose a $2.3 billion a year compliance cost on Australian businesses. This cost will be passed on to small businesses and is bad for investment, bad for the economy and bad for productivity.
The government motion was supported by Senators David Van, Jacquie Lambie, and David Pocock.
Australia is entrenched in a GDP per capita recession and almost 19,000 businesses have gone insolvent since the government came to power. Now is not the time to add even more red tape and $1.3 million per year, per business to comply.
These new climate reporting requirements also put Australia out of line with international peers. The United States, Canada, Japan, and most of Australia's trading partners do not require the reporting of Scope 3 emissions.
The Productivity Commission has confirmed to Senate Estimates that this sort of misalignment in regulation will harm investment and make Australian business less competitive.
The inclusion of Scope 3 emissions reporting means big companies will pass risk and costs down their supply chain to their small business customers - this could be a farmer banking with a big company, a café owner in the lobby of a big company, a building supplier fitting out the office of a big company, or a manufacturer buying components from a big company.
At Senate Estimates, ASIC and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman confirmed that this massive compliance cost will be passed on to small businesses.
Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said Labor's relentless attacks on Australian small business must stop.
"This green tape bomb comes on top of Labor's cuts to small business tax concessions, anti-competitive workplace laws and soaring energy bills.
"The Albanese Labor Government is essentially outsourcing activism to stop programs and industries they don't like.
"Activists may tell banks to stop lending to farmers who don't do as they're told. And a tradie doing office fit outs may have to work out the emissions from their ute and report it to the company they're doing the fit out for.
"Unlike Labor and the Greens, the Coalition will make it easier to do business and boost productivity by tackling anti-competitive red tape."
Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Luke Howarth said the government has given up on reducing red tape.
"In a cost of living and doing business crisis, more red tape is the last thing the Australian economy needs.
Unnecessary regulation ultimately costs small businesses and consumers by raising prices. The former Coalition Government had a strong deregulation agenda which has fallen by the wayside under Labor."
