Regulatory Impact Statements are supposed to function as a 'gatekeeping' mechanism for regulation. They are supposed to be rigorous assessments of the economic costs and benefits of various options. The Government is so concerned about regulation that it has just announced a review of business regulation - not dissimilar to the inquiry that followed its 1996 election commitment to cutting red tape in half.
Shortly after the last inquiry small business was presented with a new mountain of paperwork in filling out their Business Activity Statements. On this occasion the government has duly presented a Regulatory Impact Statement rigorously assessing the costs and benefits of the new IR package. Here is the entire text of its analysis of "Costs and benefits to employees"
Employees will benefit from guaranteed minimum conditions of employment which will be enshrined in federal legislation. This legislative approach will ensure that no employee can receive less than the minimum conditions set under Work Choices. In addition, where an award reliant employee's conditions of employment are more generous than the legislative minima, the employee will continue to receive the more generous entitlement. This will apply to both current and future employees who are employed under a particular award.
So there you go. There won't be any costs of the changes to employees. Makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.
There is a kind of Orwellian doublespeak about this administration, black is white, deregulation means more paper work etc. Does anyone in there have any sense of what they are actually doing where the rubber meets the road?
One of the worthwhile objectives of deregulation would be to eliminate the minimum wage, adjust the tax rate for welfare recipients who get some work, and give the underclass a chance to get employed at a rate that employers can afford to pay. That could reduce the number of intellectually handicapped people who have moved out of the psychiatric system into the prison system. It could also erode the number of third generation welfare dependents.
To appropriate an aphorism, "It's the bureauracy, stupid." Sir Humphrey has, unknowingly and at some considerable distance, taught his students well. You don't have to do a cost/benefit analysis as implied, merely fill in the blanks in the template and bingo! - Cabinet endorsement. However, given the potential impact of this legislation in the economic and social spheres, this is a particularly egregious example of filling in the dots where some rigorous analysis might be, well, might be a good idea. Oh well.
I see in today's Oz that the Treasury advice on the deal has actually been deeply buried.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17144286%255E601,00.html
Doublespeak indeed, but its origins run very deep in the shifting ground of post christian ( read no idealism )morass . There will be no release from the cul de sac of regulation until we turn our ideas on their heads and drive ourselves out as we drove ourselves in . The left has no power of its own in ideological terms , so it uses our taxes .And while the right has no longer a high view of man the merely mechanical, the mere animal traps us with something less than the fredom of principle - we prefer the known boundaries of the power of law . Both extremes now beating our heads with it, but knowing deep down that its against th freedom viewpoints of our parents .