Australia’s decreasing economic productivity is a major obstacle to our prosperity, and excessive red tape is one of its primary drivers.
The right amount of regulation is great for both business and consumers, providing guardrails that boost confidence in products and services. Regulation tends to keep building up over time though, to the point where it makes it hard to get anything done. We then need to cut the red tape, with de-regulation to remove rules that are overly-restrictive, redundant or outdated.
The Institute of Public Affairs has done a lot of analysis in this area, calculating that regulation costs the Australian economy $176 billion each year, around 11% of our GDP (which is about the same as mining sector).
Fortunately this is not a partisan issue, nobody likes red tape, so we should get on with the cuts.
A great example of the damage that can be done by over-regulation is the supply side of the current housing crisis, both in terms of development permits and construction requirements.
Any attempt by the government to solve the housing problem by way of even more regulation is at cross-purposes. There is an army of eager construction workers and property developers at the ready, we need to cut the red tape that is holding them back on many fronts.