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Standards

Adding cost through the duplication of regulation

Fri, 26/09/2008 - 10:07 — Chris Lamont

Chris LamontIt is not uncommon for houses built on either side of the street to have differing obligation and regulations imposed. 

Australian governments have embraced a need for harmonisation over the last decade. It is important to point out, however, that in respect to building regulation, the hard work was done two decades ago.

Notwithstanding the good work that was done with establishment of the Australian Building Codes Board, there are those within state and local government bureaucracies who feel that consistency in planning laws is old hat and a better way to run the building industry would be to impose hundreds of different standards and regulations unique to each jurisdiction.

The building industry faces a quagmire of red tape. Harmonisation through the Building Code of Australia (BCA) is the one saving grace for both builders and, importantly, for Australia's manufacturing and supply industries. The benefits of micro-economic reform achieved by national consistency must be preserved and can be under a united and harmonised approach under the BCA.

Energy efficiency has become an accepted technical standard that should be addressed in the design of all new buildings. Yet on the east coast of Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have different requirements. Add to this the complexity that local government sometimes impose.  It is not uncommon for houses built on either side of the street to have differing obligation and regulations imposed. 

The path to prosperity through deregulation

Lindsay Tanner's picture
Tue, 17/06/2008 - 09:34 — Lindsay Tanner

A ‘one-in', ‘one-out' approach to new Federal legislation requires that a Minister seeking to impose new regulation must try and find offsetting reductions in regulatory burden.

There can be no doubt we're facing turbulent economic times. Our inaugural budget was designed to put downward pressure on inflation as well as delivering on our election commitments and setting the Australian economy up for the longer term. 

We're addressing Australia's future challenges by funding our election commitments to improve productivity through an education revolution and by tackling the infrastructure bottlenecks which are holding our economy back.

As I pointed out last week at the Australian Trucking Convention we're also prepared to tackle the deeper structural issues effecting our capacity to compete on a world stage, and we especially see deregulation as an important a tool for improving Australia's productivity.

A national information policy?

Wed, 16/04/2008 - 11:33 — Nicholas Gruen

Dr Nicholas Gruen

Sometimes a little leadership is all it takes to nudge market forces along. 

150 years after Adam Smith first expounded the miraculous way the market's ‘invisible hand' transforms private self interest into social prosperity, some economists argued that we could achieve the same result with sufficiently sophisticated government planning.

Enter the Austrian émigré Friedrich Hayek . . . who showed that markets achieve their efficiency by utilising information which is distributed throughout the economy and so often unavailable to government. 

Traders and entrepreneurs become aware of new information constantly.  In seeking only his own advantage a trader who is hoarding grain as a result of some impending local crop failure, contributes to the common good because his hoarding drives up grain prices and this broadcasts the increasing scarcity of grain to all in the market.

Market participants need not know why grain has become scarcer, only that it now costs more, to build that information into their own decisions.  Hayek showed how deeply dysfunctional an economy robbed of this intelligence would be, an insight ultimately vindicated by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A standards strategy measures up to global trade challenges

Sat, 03/11/2007 - 00:28 — Anonymous

Mark BezzinaWith the recent explosion of ground-breaking standardised ICT protocols we are witnessing the ever increasing development of wealth-producing technologies and business models.  These business models exploit easily accessible and interoperable global networks, information and knowledge.   

Underlying most technologies and business models is the ubiquitous and somewhat ephemeral world of standards.  Standards support wealth creation by enabling the development of global production networks characterized by outsourcing, the de-verticalization of corporate structure, and new forms of “technological fusion” in which disparate technologies are brought together to achieve new products that exhibit novel performance characteristics and functionality. 

The nature of this global techno-economic system places a premium on interoperability and creates a new level of demand for acceptable standards.  Standards have also become increasingly important for the international economy and according to the World Trade Organisation underlie 80% of world trade in the exchange of goods and services. They form a fundamental part of bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade agreements.