Performance Benchmarking of Australian Business Regulation : Quantity and Quality

The Productivity Commission has released two companion reports, benchmarking business regulation across jurisdictions: one on the Quantity and Quality of Regulation, the other on the Cost of Business Registrations.This is the first report and provides indicators of the stock and flow of regulation and regulatory activities, and quality indicators for a range of regulatory processes, across all levels of government. The indicators provide some baseline information for each jurisdiction, against which trends in the quantity and quality of regulation might be assessed in the future. It is apparent that there are significant differences across jurisdictions, reflecting different regulatory approaches as well as the characteristics of the jurisdictions themselves.These reports are the first installment of a series of studies benchmarking Australian business regulation across jurisdictions. They have also served to test the usefulness of different survey techniques and benchmarking indicators and provided lessons for future exercises. In particular, the business registrations study highlighted the potential challenges in obtaining adequate data from individual businesses.The reports should facilitate a more informed discussion about comparative performance and help jurisdictions identify where they might improve their regulatory performance