Then it was announced (can't remember the year) that we would be heading for a simpler 3 tiered system of documents The act->The regulations->The Information Publications. Now that all seemed wholesome and reasonable. But around that time I left the industry and took up a career elsewhere.
That was in the mid-90s. As I said above, the 1998 regulations were going to be the simple, outcomes-based rules that would render CAOs and exemptions redundant. “Safety Through Simplicity” was the cliche.
Back then there was optimism and a genuine belief that it could and would be done by the regulator. That was a naive belief, but a genuine belief nonetheless.
These days, almost everything said about the regulatory ‘reform’ program is an outright, bare-faced lie.
I come back to it this year only to find that the CAOs are still there; there are two lots of regulations; and I haven't got to the AIPs and below yet--it was taking so long that events overtook my little project.
Don’t forget to have a quick squiz at the few thousand pages of exemptions, Manuals of Standards, directions, approvals, permissions...
So, somehow, we seem to have actually gone in the diametric opposite direction regarding the regulatory framework. Now how has that come about?
The regulatory ‘reform’ task has been abdicated to people who have a positive incentive for it to become increasingly complex and continue forever. There are individuals involved who have literally made - not six figures - but seven figures out of the program. Individuals have literally ‘earned’
millions in salary and superannuation off the back of the regulatory ‘reform’ program. Individuals.
The solution in principle is for government to do its job. Alas, the stultifying mediocrities that have presumed the title ‘governments’ over the last couple of decades are now incapable of achieving much beyond their own self-interested internal power-struggles.
Australia is, indeed, a very luck country. Imagine how deep the **** Australia would be in if governments had to achieve anything important.