PROPERT Y NEWS
Feds cutting red tape for business Initiatives that will see a reduction in the sea of regulations imposed on them by governments at all levels.
By The Hon Ben Morton MP Minister Assisting the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Minister for the Public Service, Special Minister of State REGULATION DETERMINES WHEN a business can open, what they can sell, the services they can provide and opportunities to grow and invest. When the Prime Minister asked me to take on the Morrison Government’s Deregulation Agenda, I jumped at it because of my own experience and that of my parents who had successfully run their own family businesses in Wyong NSW Deregulation Agenda. As I revealed at Australia’s inaugural Regulatory Reform Conference last month, our Deregulation Agenda is expected to deliver benefits of over $21 billion over the decade. Good deregulation means removing duplication. We know from talking to businesses, they want to comply with regulation, but they only want to do it once. And fair enough, too. We have numerous regulators at different levels of government monitoring the same businesses and mandating the same information from them in different ways. Rather than talking to each other, they push the burden onto business to resubmit the same data over and over again. Creating duplicated efforts, wasted time and lost revenue. Imposing duplicative standards on businesses doesn’t help anyone; it just jacks up prices for consumers and wastes businesses’ valuable time.
Increase the rate base
In February my Ministerial colleagues and I announced more cross-government common sense changes that will cut red tape and save time and money for hundreds of thousands of businesses. We’re changing laws to allow the use of trusted overseas product safety and information standards in Australia. We estimate this will save Australian businesses $136 million every year and improve safety for Australians and their families. My long-held view is that our starting point should be not to regulate. Instead we should take a hard look at regulations to ensure they’re justified and minimise burdens. When we talk about deregulation, we don’t mean no regulation, we mean well-designed, well-targeted and wellimplemented regulation. We want to free businesses from the barriers, blockages and bottlenecks that put undue obstacles in their way. We’re taking advantage of technological solutions to make it easier for businesses to meet their requirements. We have committed $2.8 million to digitise legal documents making it easier and quicker for individuals and businesses to communicate with each other. We have also invested in a range of technologies that make it easier, cheaper and quicker for businesses to comply with a range reporting requirements. This includes $48 million to make it easier for industry to seek environment approvals for major developments, $20 million to slash time for up to 55,000 small and medium businesses lodging mandatory reporting, and $33 million to help farmers and businesses wanting to participate in the carbon market. Because deregulation is not just for business. We are working with States and Territories to make it easier for tradies and licensed professionals including teachers, architects and real estate agents to work where the work is. Almost all States and
Territories have amended laws to remove the need for licensed workers to apply and pay for additional licences to work in different States and Territories. I am pleased WA is set to pass its own law by July. Some fly-in, fly-out workers have wallets packed with different licences just to do their job. Many others simply don’t bother to take up work interstate. Our reform has worked, not by having a national licence, not by trying to harmonise or align State rules, but to replace them with a description of accountability and transparency. We shifted the focus on the needs of businesses while ensuring we continue to keep workers and the community protected. We estimate this will benefit 168,000 workers each year and add about $2.4 billion to the economy over 10 years. While I was pleased to see the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, recently speak about deregulation, it was quite disingenuous. Labor were not supportive of these reforms. Instead, they voted in support of the Greens who tried to destroy them. Imagine the lost opportunity if they were successful. Mr Albanese claimed Labor would deliver “microeconomic reform through national consistency and removing duplication” but fails to realise the Morrison Government has already achieved this through National Cabinet last year. By listening to what Australians and businesses have to say, and freeing them from the burdens of cumulative, duplicative and unnecessary regulation, the Morrison Government is enabling industries to grow and create jobs. I’m proud of all we’ve achieved as part of the Deregulation Agenda, as well as the foundations we’ve built to support consistent reform in years to come. We will continue to find the best and most efficient ways to make Australians’ lives easier.
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saw the need to increase the rate base. Within months he had ripped through Council’s planning staff and approved developments that saw more cranes in the sky for a couple of years than anywhere. Over twenty high rise projects that had been in limbo, some for over ten years, were developed creating a huge number of jobs and increasing council’s rate base. Presently, real estate agents are reporting a huge number of enquiries coming
out of Sydney from businesses, some quite large, looking to relocate on the Central Coast. This has come about following the opening of the NorthConnex Motorway connecting the Central Coast with Western Sydney. The opportunity to increase our rate base and expand the economic pie in our region is huge. Trouble is will Council’s Administrator and CEO get the message? Approving rezonings and develop-
ment applications is all it will take. It just needs them to cut through the red tape and intransigence of staff in the Planning and Environment Department at Central Coast Council. Edgar Adams Editor CENTRAL COAST BUSINESS REVIEW MARCH 2022
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