Tougher checks on bureaucrats to help small business

Damon Kitney
SEPTEMBER 22, 2014
THE AUSTRALIAN
THE Abbott government is poised to announce tough new performance benchmarks for the nation’s regulators and bureaucrats, streamlining how they must deal with small business in a bid to slash red tape and compliance costs.
The government’s response to a Productivity Commission report on regulator engagement with small business will detail new “engagement principles’’ that will apply to commonwealth agencies in their dealings with the sector. The response is expected to form part of the government’s innovation and competitiveness agenda that will be released within weeks.
The Coalition has promised to cut more than $1 billion in red tape annually, including introducing an annual repeal day spearheaded by Tony Abbott’s parliamentary secretary for deregulation, Josh Frydenberg. On the first such occasion, tens of thousands of redundant laws were repealed.
It has also promised a new service initiative to streamline the way businesses access government information, services and programs. This includes a streamlined and consolidated one-stop-shop web presence, call centre and face-to-face business facilitation network to advise businesses on the best solution for their needs.
Small Business Minister Bruce Billson said the formulation of the engagement principles for regulators flowed from the “hunting licence’’ given to him by the Prime Minister “to go where I need to go to give more support and encouragement to the enterprise ecosystem’’.
“We want to ensure the commonwealth organises itself to be more responsive and client-­focused to small business rather than expecting bureaucratic administrative convenience to trump a more sensitive and deregulatory principle of engagement with the sector,’’ Mr Billson told The Australian.
He said the engagement principles would compel regulators and bureaucrats to consider the extent to which consultation with small businesses had been legitimate and effective and the extent to which regulatory burdens were “right-sized’’. They would also have to consider whether they were “over-reaching” or “imposing unreasonable burdens and restraints on a small businesses’ ability to thrive and prosper”. Also under consideration would be whether there were opportunities for government to adjust its performance to meet requirements that might exist in other areas.
“For example is there data or information already coming to the commonwealth and a way a technologist within the commonwealth can translate that information between agencies without having to have it recollected?’’ Mr Billson said.
The PC report, which made 18 recommendations when it was published late last year, highlighted a small winery that required about 45 federal, 25 to 86 state and five to 10 local licences depending on the jurisdiction and type of operations.
The PC also found that more than half the regulators surveyed did not permit their employees any discretion in how to deal with compliance enforcement for small business and 85 per cent did not monitor the costs their regulation imposed on business. It called on agencies to adopt a more educational, supportive approach that sought to help firms meet their compliance and not simply punish them for failure.