They have been re-writing the regulations to make them clearer and more concise for decades - a project that has always been 'soon to be completed' since the early 1990s. I think the last statement to the recent senate review was there was only 5% left to do.
Began in September 1988. 30 years in September this year. The same regulatory rewrite took Canada and New Zealand five years. So far the CASA regulatory rewrite has cost Australia something north of $500 million. 5% is not correct.
In those famous words from the then CASA Director in the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee hearings of 14 February 2005 .......
Senator MARK BISHOP—Now that [the Regulatory Reform Program] has been refocused away from a timely conclusion, what is the new completion date and how is it proposed to stop it drifting along forever?
Mr Byron—We do not have a firm completion date at this stage, but we should be able to generate that fairly soon. Mr Gemmell mentioned the refocus, I suppose, that I imposed on the organisation in late 2003-04 on getting the rules right and getting the quality. I found it necessary late last year to articulate in a bit more detail some guiding principles about how I wanted that done and who I wanted to be involved in the process.
I have issued some guiding principles on the formulation of new regulations and, if necessary, manuals of standards that accompany them. I have, I suppose, imposed on the system an additional layer of consultation, to assure me that the final draft rules that I send to the minister for consideration by the parliament are the right ones and that they address very carefully risks that are real and necessary issues that must be picked up by regulations. I felt it was necessary to do that to make sure that I have the right rules. I am not going to put my signature to anything that I do not think adequately addresses safety issues.
Senator MARK BISHOP—When do you think those regulations will go to the minister?
Mr Byron—I anticipate we would start sending some of them from about the middle of this year. I do not see this delaying the overall program excessively. We have an action item to develop a plan to forward to the minister about when we plan to have them to the minister, and I assume that plan would be done in the next couple of months. I would be hopeful that it would not be long after early 2006 that most of the draft rules are delivered to the minister.
The Neverending Story.......... It is a job to retirement for too many public servants for this story to ever end.