Yesterday I spoke with Associate Professor Salvatore Babones from Sydney Uni on my forthcoming Centre for Independent Studies Policy Paper Rationalising Regulation. You can watch our conversation on YouTube via the player below. Thanks to those readers who I know tuned into the live-stream. Salvatore and I spoke about a wide range of issues including how excessive regulatory processes and so-called law-fare have constrained economic development, how vested interests support the retention of many regulations, how sunset clauses can be useful, and the importance of strengthening existing regulatory assessment processes.

Unfortunately, in Queensland, as we learned last week, the Queensland Productivity Commission, which has the role of overseeing regulatory impact analysis, is being moved into Queensland Treasury, meaning it won’t have the independence from Government it once did. The QPC didn’t win itself any friends in the Government when it published that research paper last month highlighting how the Queensland economy had been under-performing prior to COVID, which regular readers will know was a regular theme of this blog.