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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1516 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Indeed, agencies will need to consider long and hard whether regulation is needed at all. Regulations will be the last and not the first resort. Agencies are now required to provide a copy of their regulatory needs analysis to the business regulation review unit for comment before they decide on a particular regulatory approach. Agencies must also complete a regulatory reform check list when developing regulations, to demonstrate that they have considered regulatory reform issues. Agencies have also been asked to develop annual regulatory plans. This is not seen as an onerous task; rather, as one that will remind agencies of the need to reduce regulations and red tape. They must report against their regulatory plans in their annual reports. As the Minister for Regulatory Reform, I intend to table the first regulatory plans for 1997-98 in the Legislative Assembly before 30 September this year.

Much of the work of the ACT's Red Tape Task Force is mirrored in the report of the Small Business Deregulation Task Force, Time for Business. The Small Business Deregulation Task Force was established by the Commonwealth Government to review the regulatory burden on small business. That task force was chaired by the managing director of McDonald's Australia, Mr Charlie Bell, and the task force's report was delivered to the Commonwealth in November 1996. It contains 62 recommendations, of which 26 require Commonwealth-State-Territory cooperation to implement. It seems that red tape and excessive regulation are endemic throughout Australia. The message of that report is that the time spent by small business people in filling out forms or trying to sort out a myriad of tax obligations is time better spent running the business, and that is a proposition this Government totally agrees with. The Government agrees with this message and supports the general thrust of the report because it reflects our own strong commitment to reducing the regulatory compliance burdens and red tape that reduce the productivity of many businesses.

In conclusion, the Government has done much to progress regulatory reform in the ACT. We gave a commitment at the last election to review the red tape burden. This resulted in the establishment of the Red Tape Task Force. The great majority of the recommendations of that task force have been implemented or, in the few cases where implementation is not fully completed, a program for full implementation is in place. I am pleased to report that the actions of the Government in implementing the recommendations of the Red Tape Task Force have been fully endorsed by that task force.

Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the task force and, in particular, its chair, Mrs Elizabeth Whitelaw, for the time and effort they put into that report. The implementation of their recommendations has done much to reduce the red tape and regulatory burdens on business in the ACT. I present the following paper:

Regulatory Reform - ministerial statement, 15 May 1997.

I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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