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GOVERNMENT

3 Excellencies

Keith BesgroveGovernments should be concerned about ensuring that there are consumer protections around privacy, around fraud, and around measures to give consumers confidence.

There are many international challenges posed for regulators by the internet.

In a range of applications we increasingly find that our traditional notions of nationally based regulatory structures are partially or wholly irrelevant. To take one example, the growing use of botnets, to mount various forms of criminal and other malicious attacks pose problems for governments. Who do you prosecute when the botnets involve computers in 20 different countries, used to mount attacks in a 21st country which spirit money away to a 22nd country under whose legal framework, nothing illegal is going on?

In June I attended the OECD Ministerial meeting on the Future of the Internet (www.oecd.org/FutureInternet). One speaker who stood out was EU Commissioner Vivian Reading who talked about the pivotal importance of co-regulation with industry based, on a clear recognition of consumer rights. At the same time, the EU has demonstrated a strong willingness to regulate where it believes in cannot achieve effective collaboration with industry - the regulation on global roaming charges being a controversial case in point.

More than just lip-service

Anne SummersIt is great to see women's employment issues and problems - such as lack of equal pay, lack of child care, lack of paid maternity leave - finally being acknowledged and put back onto the political agenda.

While in my last blog I suggested the government has done well in promoting women to senior roles in cabinet, it is important that it does not commit the mistake of typecasting women as mothers, thus alienating those who have yet to have kids, or whose kids have already grown. 

I was disappointed that the Rudd government decided not to reverse the previous government's downgrading of the women's policy advice function from the Prime Minister's department to the welfare area.

As you will recall, the Howard government not only downgraded the Office of the status of Women but also changed its name - to the Office for Women. We lost our power - and our status. 

The Rudd government has given us back the status, at least in the title Tanya Plibersek enjoys as Minister for the Status of Women - but not the power. There is now an Office of Work and Family in the Prime Minister's department, but not an Office of Women. I am not being semantic here. As I will point out in a moment, not all women are in the workforce and not all women are in what is generally understood to be a family - and many don't want to be.

A Fairer Approach to Risk Equalisation

John Rashleigh

Managed well, Risk Equalisation has an important social role to play in ensuring health insurance is available to all Australian citizens, alleviating considerable pressure from the public purse. 

I'd like to highlight an area of regulation pertaining to the private health insurance sector that urgently requires reform.

The Risk Equalisation scheme must be amended, because at the moment, it totally lacks equity. Through my role as Chairman of HIRMAA (the peak body for restricted and regional funds I've been raising this contention with the Federal government (and the previous one) for quite a while. Unfortunately regulatory reform in this area is being stymied, due to no good reason I can see, other than the powerful opposition of the big insurers.

Risk Equalisation is essentially a new name for what we used to call reinsurance. It's a concept which has been a central aspect of private health insurance since October 1976 (having been preceded by a similar arrangement known as the Special Account that had been introduced in 1959). 

I agree we need to retain the system of Risk Equalisation funds pooling. However, because of the differences between the big and small players, a far more equitable approach would be to have two separate pools.

What governments should do

Patrick CallioniAn independent judiciary, a strong civil society and an effective bureaucracy are far more important to social stability and economic development than the application of Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian or Westminster principles.

In substance, I abide by the traditional formulation of the role of the state, which is to provide peace, order and good government. Governments should do what they do best - in Paul Ormerod's words, "Governments should do much less...detailed short-term intervention...and [spend more time] thinking about the overall framework." They should shun ideology and focus on making the environment right for us to go about our business, while being mindful of the consequences of allowing too much freedom.

Strangely enough, to allow citizens and business the freedom they crave, good government must contain an element of regulation, it must, in some cases, in some ways, restrict freedom. This is because regulation is an essential ingredient of governance and, in turn, governance is fundamental to the success of the modern state and of modern economies. Maslow developed a "hierarchy of needs" for individuals. The higher needs in this hierarchy become relevant as a motivator of behaviour only when the lower needs are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be a priority. I think this model is applicable at the societal level as well. I think a similar pyramid or hierarchy of needs can be constructed for society as a whole.

How Regulators Can Learn From Business

Joe TripodiWorking with business, rather than over the top of them, reduces costs to government, encourages private sector expertise and contributes to economic growth.

Regulatory reform is becoming a common project of governments across the world. As economies and businesses become more sophisticated in their operations, governments have recognised they must become more selective and innovative in the ways they regulate.

It is hard to describe the historical situation in Australia as one of more or less regulation. Relative to Europe there is a less regulated and rigid business environment. On the one hand, the number of pages of regulation has increased substantially; on the other hand governments have deregulated entire industries over the past few decades.

What we are seeing is change in the favoured style of regulation: these days, the focus is on setting the basic (enforceable) rules of the game and letting the market find its own solutions when this is possible. For example, where possible we expect regulation to be expressed in terms of an outcome to be achieved rather than a process for achieving it. This rewards productivity and innovation as firms seek the most efficient ways to comply.

Advance Australia Fair

Anne Summers

Will women be better off under the Rudd government?

Advance Australia Fair! I can't think of a better title for a session exploring issues affecting women in the workplace. 

Because we want a fair deal for women. We have not had that for far too long but we can hope that, with the election of the Rudd government, that is going to change.

In the time available to me today, I want to remind us of what we lost under the Howard government and what we want restored to us under the Rudd/Gillard government.

In November 2003, I published a book called The End of Equality, which documented the reversal of women's rights under the coalition government.  It made three key points:

1) That the Howard government brought an ideological perspective to women and tried to send us back to the 1950s; in particular, it tried to bribe us into having more babies and it used policy to deter mothers from working, unless they were single mothers in which case they were given no choice.

2) The Howard government also downgraded, disempowered or outright abolished key agencies and offices designed to advocate for women's equality and to monitor our progress.  As a result, it sent a strong signal to the community that women's status was no longer of concern.