Friday 26 August 2016

Auditor General Slams Baird government over ineffective "Red Tape" reduction

In a report embarrassing Mike Baird and his government the NSW Auditor General has exposed the lack of competence of the government in their measures to reduce red tape as ineffective after they increased the regulatory burden by $16.1 million.

The Liberal-National Government, the self proclaimed party of small business has been embarrassed by the report into red tape reduction which found that the regulatory burden faced by small businesses has increased after the Government introduced changes in 2011. The report states:

"Overall, NSW Government initiatives and processes to prevent and reduce red tape were not effective. Reported red tape savings were inaccurate and the regulatory burden of legislation increased."

The report highlighted that the overall net legislative burden increased by $16.1 million after significant legislative reforms were introduced. The Auditor General also reported that many of the regulatory repeals did little to assist businesses facing regulatory burden as they targeted legislation with little to no regulatory burden rather than legislation impeding businesses.

The complexity of legislation also increased during the last five years. The number of pages of legislation – usually used to highlight how complex a piece of legislation is – increased over the life of the policy by 1.4 per cent per year on average. Before the policy was implemented, the previous ten years had a reduction of legislative complexity of 1.1 per cent per year on average.

Earlier this year the Government attempted to claim that it’s Learning Management Business Reform (LMBR) program would save the community $11,384,605 through red tape reductions despite the program running $95 million over budget, three years late, rolled out to only in one in ten schools and plagued with a host of problems.

I have made the point repeatedly. This government is just not competent. Just being a "nice guy" is not the political leadership that this state requires. Mike Baird is just another one of those politicians who actions just do not match his rhetoric, and we will all be the losers because of it.