The Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR) has undertaken a screening process to identify regulation due to be reviewed in 2012 as a result of Recommendation 7.28 of Rethinking Regulation - Report of the Taskforce on Reducing Regulatory Burdens on Business (the Banks Review). The screening process revealed that most regulation was subject to the sunsetting under the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 (LIA). The majority of the remaining regulation either contained an internal review mechanism or had already been reviewed by some other mechanism, such as broad ranging reviews, statutory reviews or inquiries. This left only a handful of regulations introduced in 2007 and 2008 that would be subject to a five-yearly review and none of these could be considered priority areas for review by the administering agencies. The note on the screening process is provided below.
Published Impact Analyses
Official website for Published Impact Analyses for decisions announced by the Australian Government, Ministerial Forums and National Standard Setting Bodies.
On 20 December 2012, the Assistant Treasurer announced that the Government will introduce legislative amendments to provide consumers with protection against unfair terms in insurance contracts. Currently, remedies for unfair terms in consumer contracts do not apply to insurance contracts. Estimates based on limited, mostly anecdotal, evidence suggest that in a year a small number of consumers (between 75 and 150) may be suffering a small aggregate financial detriment (between $5-10 million) due to unfair terms in insurance contracts. The Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) recommends amending the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 to provide remedies for unfair terms in insurance contracts.
On 20 April 2012 the Prime Minister and the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing announced a package of significant reforms to the way in which aged care is provided and funded in Australia. A Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) was prepared by the Department of Health and Ageing and assessed as adequate by the Office of Best Practice Regulation for the proposed package. One element of this package was a requirement for approved aged care providers to seek pre-approval from the Government of proposed accommodation charges from 1 July 2014.
The Attorney-General and state and territory ministers have agreed to a single voluntary government-led code of practice to help manage the security risks associated with eleven identified chemicals that can be used to make homemade explosives. These chemicals have a range of legitimate and productive uses in Australia and can be easily accessed by the public. However, security concerns have been identified in the way these chemicals are handled. The Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) examined five options to encourage businesses to adopt a range of measures to address security concerns when handling these chemicals. The options examined included three voluntary take-up options, a mandatory code of practice option and the status quo. Some of the measures identified to address concerns included security awareness training and having theft and diversion procedures.
On 11 December 2012, the National Measurement Institute; a division within the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, announced the removal of an exemption for a subset of electricity meters installed from 1 January 2013 onwards. Since 1995 electricity meters have been exempt from national requirements to be pattern approved and verified to allow time for the necessary standards and infrastructure to be established. Pattern approval is the process of testing and assessing a type of electricity meter to ensure that it is capable of maintaining accuracy when subjected to influences and disturbances such as temperature variations, electrical interferences, voltage variations and harmonics. Verification is the process of assessing whether an individual meter operates within specified limits of error.
Financial advisers often play an important role in helping their retail clients choose financial products. This advice should therefore take into account the clients’ needs, and the performance and other characteristics of the product. Recent trends towards industry consolidation have created interdependencies between financial advisers, product providers and investment platforms. These associations mean that many advisers effectively act as a product pipeline. Of the remainder, the majority receive commission from product issuers which act as an incentive to promote certain products.
Electricity transmission and distribution, gas pipelines and distribution networks (energy networks) are known as ‘natural monopoly’ industries. This means that any particular geographic area is most efficiently served by a single provider (as opposed to multiple, competing providers). To manage the risk of monopoly pricing (that is, prices that are inefficiently high) the prices charged by energy networks are regulated. For the most part, first-instance pricing determinations are made by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). The AER considers the network provider’s operating and capital expenses and commercial returns, and forecasts its revenue requirements. This in turn determines the network tariff charged through retailers to consumers. Network pricing decisions are currently reviewable by the Australian Competition Tribunal.
On 30 November 2012, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy announced a series of initial reforms in relation to the Convergence Review. These reforms included the following regulatory announcements:
On 7 December 2012, the Australian and New Zealand ministers responsible for the regulation of food agreed to enact new laws requiring the country of origin to be displayed on unpackaged beef, lamb and poultry to address consumer interest in this information. A business will be able to comply with the new requirements by displaying a single sign for Australian products while imported product will be specifically labelled with the country of origin. Some consumers may benefit from these new arrangements where they want to know the source of their meat, however the benefits are not expected to be large given most imported meat is currently labelled. The cost to business from this requirement is also expected to be low, given high levels of voluntary compliance and the low cost of labelling.
On 7 December 2012, the Australian and New Zealand ministers responsible for the regulation of food agreed to enact new laws in early 2013 that regulate the way food nutrition and health related claims can be made. The new laws set standards for the use of the nutritional content claims (e.g. ‘low fat’) and health claims (e.g. ‘contains calcium for healthy bones’). General level health claims (e.g. ‘calcium is good for strong bones’) can be supported by either pre-approved or industry self-substantiated food health relationships. High level health claims (e.g. ‘calcium reduces the risk of osteoporosis’) will require pre-approval by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).