Treasury Secretary speaks about regulation and COAG reform

Secretary to the Treasury, Dr Ken Henry's Ian Little Memorial Lecture pays tribute to the former Secretary of the Victorian Department for Treasury and Finance for a number of reasons including his involvement with the National Competition Policy which lead to a new National Reform Agenda that embraces competition, regulatory reform and human capital streams.

Dr Henry 's speech discusses the 3 streams of the National Reform Agenda and their results to date in detail:

In the regulation stream, COAG committed to addressing ten priority cross-jurisdictional regulation ‘hotspots’: rail safety regulation; occupational health and safety; national trade measurement; chemicals and plastics; development assessment arrangements; building regulation; environmental assessment and approvals processes; business name, Australian Business Number and related business registration processes; personal property securities; and product safety. In these areas (and many others), jurisdictions apply quite different regulatory regimes. As a consequence, businesses operating across state borders must comply with multiple regulations...

The NRA competition stream promises further reforms in the areas of energy, transport, infrastructure regulation and planning and climate change innovation and mitigation strategies.

The area of the NRA with the greatest potential benefits for the Australian economy, and the one that Ian Little pressed the hardest, is the human capital stream. In February 2006, COAG agreed a comprehensive framework of objectives for the human capital agenda, focused on improving health, education and training outcomes and encouraging and supporting work...

The failure of the NRA to achieve more meaningful reform in the human capital stream and the disappointing pace of implementation of the substantial and worthwhile reforms endorsed two years ago in the competition and regulatory reform streams can be attributed, in large part, to funding issues.
The absence of financial incentives and effective sanctions for failing to meet agreed timeframes and milestones probably explains most of the disappointing implementation progress to date. The aversion to the logic of markets to which I referred earlier can be managed only by financial flows.

Today, however, there is cause for optimism.

Less than a month after the November 2007 federal election, the Council of Australian Governments met here in Melbourne to reinvigorate the National Reform Agenda.

Heads of government recognised they had a unique opportunity to put behind them the tensions of the past, and deliver a substantial national reform effort.

At that meeting, COAG identified seven areas for its 2008 work program: health and ageing; education and training; climate change and water; infrastructure; business regulation and competition; housing; and indigenous reform. A set of working groups, headed by Commonwealth ministers, has been established to identify reforms for COAG’s consideration, and to drive their delivery.