Minding the Gap: Appraising the promise and performance of regulatory reform in Australia

Abstract

Professor Wanna has produced around 17 books including two national text books on policy and public management. He has produced a number of research-based studies on budgeting and financial management including: Budgetary Management and Control (1990); Managing Public Expenditure (2000), From Accounting to Accountability (2001) and, most recently, Controlling Public Expenditure (2003). He has just completed a study of state level leadership covering all the state and territory leaders-entitled Yes Premier: Labor leadership in Australia's states and territories-and has edited a book on Westminster Legacies in Asia and the Pacific-Westminster Legacies: Democracy and responsible government in Asia and the Pacific. He was a chief investigator in a major Australian Research Council funded study of the Future of Governance in Australia (1999-2001) involving Griffith and the ANU. His research interests include Australian and comparative politics, public expenditure and budgeting, and government-business relations. He also writes on Australian politics in newspapers such as The Australian, Courier-Mail and The Canberra Times and has been a regular state political commentator on ABC radio and TV.

The political economy of Australian regulatory reform

“…For their first decade they were assessed by the Business Regulation Review Unit in the Department of Industry, Technology, and Commerce, then after 1990 the Office of Regulation Review (ORR) in the independent Industries Commission. In this period the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) system had low levels of compliance (Carroll, 2008b;Forster, Head, & Wanna, 1991). The RIS system was reformed on the election of the Howard government in keeping with its focus on the interests of small business.…”

“…That task force recommended the government direct its attention to broader regulatory instruments, leading to revisions of the RIS system and an inquiry into quasi-regulatory codes and standards (Commonwealth Interdepartmental Committee on Quasi-regulation, 1997). Increasing pressure from business groups (see Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 2005;Business Council of Australia, 2005a, 2005b led to the creation of a more general and wider reaching inquiry into regulation which reported in 2006, the Banks inquiry, after its chair the Gary Banks, head of the Productivity Commission (Taskforce on Regulation Taskforce, 2006;Carroll, 2008c). The bank inquiries recommended that a regulatory oversight and reform ministerial portfolio be created at the cabinet level.…”

“…At its April 2007 meeting COAG agreed to a Regulatory Reform Plan for improving the mechanisms of regulatory creation in each jurisdiction ('gate keeping mechanisms'). It directed the Productivity Commission to investigate benchmarking approaches by which regulatory burdens could be compared across jurisdictions, as well as look at the impact of those burdens on business registration -a standard metric by which the regulatory burden is measured internationally (see the World Bank's Doing Business project, which launched in 2002) -across the states and territories (Productivity Commission, 2008a, 2008b.…”

Insider Perspectives on Influence and Decision Making in the Australian Political Sphere: A Case Study of National Quality Policy in ECEC 2006–09

“…However despite providing these justifications for the NRA, the Howard Coalition Government was not convinced of its merit until the proposal was refined and reframed using three core areas of reform: competition, regulation and human capital. The focus of these three areas of reform are described by Carroll et al (2008) as increasing competitive markets, reducing red tape and improving the health, skills and motivation of the workforce. To further bolster the reframed NRA proposal, the Victorian Government commissioned a report from the Productivity Commission to assess the projected improvements in productivity and human capital to justify national reform (Banks, 2010;PC, 2006).…”