Page 1862 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2022
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all learnt from these experiences, and it is important to take these learnings into our future regulatory practices.
The ACT government has long been committed to better regulation. We want to continue to find the right balance between regulatory outcomes and effort, and to support a “how can we help?” mindset. That is why the task force is focused on making interactions with business better, faster and simpler by improving the rules, regulations, government processes, information and supports for business. We want businesses to have better experiences when interacting with the ACT government. To achieve this outcome, through its discovery phase the task force took a multifaceted approach to understanding what changes could be made through best practice regulation.
The task force began by engaging directly with businesses. As the report outlines, we heard that, when it comes to dealing with government, businesses want government to better understand their needs and experiences, they want information to be clearer and targeted to them, they want to only tell government once, and they want to know where they can go to get help and for there to be someone they can talk to who understands business. They want government to “think small first”, to say yes whenever it can, to be more transparent, coordinated and consistent, and for processes and approvals to be streamlined. The task force also looked at best practice regulation in other jurisdictions and commissioned a wide-ranging review of legislation to identify potential areas for reform.
After taking the time to listen to businesses and to understand their needs, the findings from the discovery phase have been analysed and developed into a better regulation agenda for the ACT. The agenda, or work program, is broad and ambitious—and it is stepped out clearly in the report. We want there to be an unambiguous, shared understanding across the government and business communities about the reform work we will be progressing. I will take the opportunity today to guide the Assembly through it.
The agenda will be implemented progressively over the coming years, with two streams of government reform action. Both streams are equally important for achieving better regulation outcomes for business, and each work stream will be progressed in parallel. Stream 1 is focused on policy and legislation. This stream is about improvements we can make to our current policy settings and legislative frameworks to improve outcomes for business. Having listened to, and continuing to listen to, the needs of business, we will make continual improvements to the rules, regulations and government processes.
For example, we heard from business about the importance of government procurement. We will review legislation, policies and processes with a small and medium enterprise lens and bring forward options to support a best practice procurement framework. This will be a wide-ranging review of many components of the procurement framework, including reviewing procurement policies for local industry participation and reviewing procurement thresholds. We understand that there is a cost on business to respond to requests for quotes and tenders. We will work to make sure that they are proportionate to the tender requirements.
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