Senator IAN CAMPBELL (10:27 AM) —The government has sought to move through this legislation to biennial reporting because virtually everyone who reviewed this act told us that that would improve the potential to achieve equal opportunity in the workplace for women. The feedback we got from the Independent Review Committee, the Affirmative Action Agency and the Office of the Status of Women all said that the one-year cycle was too short and that it effectively led to organisational resources being tied up basically filling out forms as opposed to strategic implementation of equal employment opportunity initiatives. That really is the reason the government changed the reporting time: all of these agencies and independent committees that looked at the annual reporting structure said that it basically ensured you did not have time to get into implementing programs because you spent half the year filling out forms.

The agency itself made the recommendation to the Independent Review Committee. Not only did the agency, as was referred to by Senator Crossin earlier, acknowledge the benefits that would flow from moving to biennial reporting in terms of what it would confer on organisations and their EEO programs; it also made the point that it would free up the agency's resources to assist organisations to make substantive gains.

So the independent review saw this as a win-win. Firstly, organisations who were supposed to be implementing EEO programs would benefit because they would spend more time building equal employment opportunity programs into the mainstream of their organisations. I think Senator Crossin and I use different terminology when it comes to `mainstream'. My view is that the outcome of EEO programs should be to build them into the mainstream of that organisation. Furthermore, the agency itself would not have to spend so much time and so much of its resources basically receiving these annual reports.

When a government requires an organisation to report annually, it puts a burden on two sets of people: firstly, on those filling out the forms; and, secondly, on the agency receiving the forms, collating them and analysing them. We have had the business sector, the organisational sector, saying, `We cannot spend our time productively in equal employment opportunity program development if we are spending all this time filling out forms,' and we have had the agency telling us, `Our time, our resources—limited as they always are when you are part of a government organisation—can be spent more effectively developing and making substantive gains in terms of equal employment opportunity if we do not have this annual reporting regime.' So the government was incredibly happy to endorse the recommendation. We thought it was practical and sensible. We saw it as a way of improving the chances for genuine equal opportunity for women in the workplace. We are surprised, to say the least, that Labor would seek to maintain a system that all of the stakeholders have said is not working.

Furthermore, the Commonwealth believes—and it has always been part of our policy—if we can relieve the burden of red tape on the community as a whole if that sort of regulation is not seen to be improving our society, then it is an important objective to achieve. We would prefer to see both the profit sector and the non-profit sector focusing their resources and energies on constructive and productive activity rather than filling in forms and complying with government red tape. Quite frankly, when you have the agency telling us, `We will improve the objects and the chances of achieving equal employment opportunity,' and we have the business sector saying, `We can do it better without having to fill in these forms,' then we really think it is a win-win situation—less red tape, better chance of achieving your objectives and better opportunities for the federal government agencies responsible to put their resources into substantive gain. I certainly hope that the Democrats will, on this occasion, support the government.