At last week’s productivity roundtable, the Australian Trucking Association (ATA) led the charge to reduce government burden on transport businesses.
The roundtable, led by Queensland Senator Matt Canavan and held in Parliament House one floor above the economic reform roundtable, allowed ATA chief of staff Bill McKinley to call for the increased use of regulatory impact analysis.
Canavan’s roundtable discussed the need for repeal clauses in government regulations and the need for an independent body to review regulation.
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At the roundtable, McKinley told Canavan and other participants that the quality of regulatory impact analysis completed by the federal government’s departments and commissions like the National Transport Commission was high.
He said that other organisations such as agencies set up under co-operative national schemes often considered that the requirement did not apply to them.
“In our submission to the NHVR on the implementation of its PBS Directional Stability under Braking standard, we pointed out that its onerous requirements for retrospectively fitting electronic braking to converter dollies had not been subject to formal impact analysis,” McKinley said after the meeting.
“But the NHVR is a national standard setting body. It is required to undertake proper impact assessments.
“Organisations that set rules and standards for business need to start by defining the problem they’re trying to fix and then test the benefits and costs of a range of options, including approaches that don’t involve regulation.”
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