The new Business Council of Australia (BCA) report released today Pipeline or Pipe Dream? presents interesting data on the high cost of delivering investment projects in Australia and comments that this could threaten future investment, exports and employment. Some of the numbers on the comparative cost of projects in Australia versus the US look unbelievably high (e.g. it costs 90% more to build an airport and 62% more to build a hospital in Australia than the US), and I wonder if they have adjusted for quality? But at least it gets people talking and I’m sure someone will produce more believable numbers in time. The report points out one useful example of possible over-regulation in Queensland:

A BCA member told us it required 70 approvals and 19 different decision points to build two bitumen import terminals in Queensland.

That BCA member appears to be BP (see BP plans to build two bitumen import terminals), which can probably handle the extra paperwork and time taken to get approvals from processes designed to protect the environment and local amenity. Nonetheless it may make a useful case study for the Government to review the efficiency of its regulations.