Costs of cutting red tape mount up

The real cost of red tape discarded is becoming more apparent by the day.

HOW good's a job the Prime Minister exclaimed this week in rejecting a long overdue increase to unemployment benefits. Not bad when it comes with the perks of office he enjoys.

Opinion - Bill Hoffman

BANKS, superannuation funds, aged care, vocational training, builders, ASIC, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority, wage theft - and that's just the half of it.

At some point soon, and surely by the time Sydney's billion-dollar price tag to fix that city's diabolical inflammable cladding debacle is paid, someone may reconsider the modern aversion to red tape, green tape and regulatory oversight.

It's well past time that someone in politics started to realise that there are things, and particularly those that relate to fundamental service delivery, that may best be delivered by governments with an eye to a standard other than just profit.

There's not been a day go by this week when an example of what happens when markets are given free rein in the cynical name of jobs and productivity, hasn't screamed from newspaper headlines and the airwaves. In nearly all cases taxpayers' money is at play in environments all but devoid of oversight.

Yet our parliaments have failed completely to grasp that when a margin for profit is required something has to give.

Surely it didn't need a Royal Commission to require the testimony of celebrity chef Maggie Beer to inform regulators and the executives of companies that the elderly, or anyone in Australia for that matter, can't be adequately fed on $7 a day.

But that's what's been happening and its taken evidence from Beer and cooks and kitchen hands working in nursing homes to lift the lid on what's been going on.

Untrained and under-trained "carers” being paid the minimum allowable now look after the end of life needs of many in this once lucky, "greatest” country on earth.

Many of our hospitals are being fed by corporations whose executives measure success by the bottom line rather than what ultimately is the best interest of patients.

Last year our big four banks were finally exposed for practices that should have - but are yet to - bring people before the courts and then off to jail.

Sweet heart deals in tight clubs of influence have left some immune to the law's full weight while petty criminals face jail terms, ridicule and public censure.

Meanwhile the unemployed are expected to live below the poverty line on a $275.10 weekly stipend with the Prime Minister's defence that well over 90 per cent are on other allowances ignoring the reality that for most those represent only another $10 a week.

"How good's a job,” Scott Morrison asked this week.

You bloody beauty if it's one that delivers the regular pay rises and healthy super contributions his does. Maybe not so if your getting by on the 30 hours a week on which many subsist, hours carefully calibrated to keep employers from paying the benefits attracted by full time work.

Ideology has overridden decency despite the obvious reality that a living wage should be a basic tenet of country of our claimed wealth.

Also ignore, the entreaties of economists that the quickest way to stimulate a flagging economy would be to ensure our poorest have enough for life's necessities - food, shelter, hope.

Governments once expected to regulate in the defence of standards and the greater good now appear to rely solely on processes that give the appearance but not the effect of doing so.

The behaviour filters through all levels of government to the point where genuine consultation has become another box to tick and communities are sidelined when they are not onside with the game.

The Reserve Bank is now calling on the federal government to spend billions on congestion-busting infrastructure to deliver economic stimulation.

Yet no-one in politics is questioning either how the mess was created in a planned and regulated environment or whether the public sector rather than the private may be the best means of delivery.

The number of companies that have gone into liquidation leaving subcontractors unpaid on government projects, surely demands questions be asked about reactivation of public works departments.

Increased density that helps create congestion is a product of lines drawn on government planning maps that deliver instant profits to land-bankers and speculators. Yet the resultant congestion cost is transferred to government to pick up.

No wonder they are all technically broke, but again where's the debate about whether such idiocy should be allowed to continue.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese this week implored Labor politicians not to call their opponents 'liars'.

He may have a point with the term now all but redundant in a post-truth world where construct has replaced genuine honesty and making a buck and so-called political vision justify the absence of integrity.