Maintain the pressure on regulatory reform
Better regulation is about informed choice between regulatory options.
Reform is not always spectacular. Economic crises may call forth radical solutions while other important reforms may be happening simultaneously but relatively quietly. The work of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) on business regulation is an example.
COAG's Business Regulation and Competition Working Group recently released its "annual report card", Towards a seamless national economy. It reveals considerable progress and promise in 27 reform areas. (COAG noted this at its Hobart meeting on 30 April.) There will be harmonised regimes and model regulation affecting many sectors, from transport safety to director's liability, payroll tax to occupational health and safety. These changes will help move Australia, in the words of Commonwealth Deregulation Minister Lindsay Tanner (co-chair of the Working Group), "from being nine markets to one".
It will be important that the momentum is maintained. The potential for reform exhaustion is always present in government and the likelihood of it is multiplied in a federation like ours.
The National partnership agreement to deliver a seamless national economy (2008) commits the Commonwealth, States and Territories to "improving processes for regulation making and review", following principles agreed by COAG in 2007 which emphasise better analysis of the impact and costs of regulation, not restricting competition, effective consultation, and consideration of alternative instruments of regulation, including self-regulation and co-regulation.
The 2007 document ran to nearly ten closely-printed pages in which each jurisdiction set out the actions it proposed to take. The coverage of "regulatory reform" in the most recent (late 2008) implementation plan, by contrast, is quite cryptic – a single page with no explicit commitment that COAG will look again at this important issue.
Business and the community will hope this reticence does not signify lack of interest. All jurisdictions talk about considering alternatives to detailed, black-letter regulation (Acts and regulations). But is there a sophisticated understanding of these alternatives (industry codes, various consensus-based standards, self-regulation and other options), knowledge of when they have worked successfully, a way to compare the relative benefits of different options, a feel for opportunities for them to be applied in the future, and a willingness to discuss possibilities with the bodies that produce these instruments?
Better regulation is about informed choice between regulatory options. The COAG Working Group should convene a continuing roundtable of bodies that are familiar with these different ways of regulating. The roundtable could include, for example, bodies administering ASIC industry codes of practice and ACCC industry codes of conduct, Standards Australia and professional bodies, as well as representatives of consumers and business.
This would extend the Working Group's consultations beyond the Ministers and advisers of COAG to include meaningful dialogue with other players in the regulation space. Ultimately, regulators within government have a proprietary interest in regulation; reducing the amount of government regulation potentially involves them in a conflict of interest. Consulting people from outside government would give fresh perspectives and allow COAG to build on its regulatory reform achievements for the benefit of all Australians.
John Tucker is CEO of Standards Australia, the national standards body.
