Australia's federal government is expanding and embedding a regulatory stewardship model across the Commonwealth. Regulatory stewardship is a move away from the centralised and prescriptive practices of the past. Ministers, policy agencies who design regulation, and regulators are responsible for ensuring the regulation is fit-for-purpose, well targeted, and well implemented. Stewards are expected to look beyond ‘black letter’ legislation and administration to make sure regulations meet community goals and are responsive to stakeholder needs.

Stewardship encourages government agencies to innovate and learn from each other to address business and other stakeholder concerns.

Stewardship favours flexible guidance and regular reviews, rather than a centralised and rigid check box approach. For example, the government’s activity-based costing reviews of agency regulations is helping us to develop best practice cost recovery guidelines. This will help ensure business pays no more than they should for regulatory services.

Since 2019, the Secretaries Board has provided critical leadership and oversight to lift ambition for regulatory reform across the Australian Public Service (APS).

Each Secretary reports on their regulatory reform agenda to Secretaries Board every six months, including key achievements and initiatives within their portfolios.

Key achievements include:

• Cutting cross-border red tape for licensed workers, increasing the mobility of Australia’s workforce and helping businesses operate more seamlessly across Australia.
• Shifting to a regulatory ‘stewardship’ model to promote innovation and sustainability of regulatory reform.
• Embedding a culture of strong regulator performance and accountability, including revitalised Ministerial Statements of Expectations for regulators.
• Launching the online Employment Contract Tool to help businesses employ their first person by guiding employers through a series of questions to generate an employment contract.
• Simplifying the collection of international student information to streamline enrolment for international students and Australian education providers.
• Launching the Trade Information Service to provide businesses with a single source of online information on how to export, including regulatory and border compliance requirements.
• Modernising Australia’s business registers to make it easier and faster for business to interact with government by consolidating 32 registers into a single register.
• Simplified Trade Systems reforms which will deliver benefits to business of over $240 million per year, and will contribute to eventual savings of over $1 billion per year.
• Fixing a range of administrative or legacy laws across 18 Commonwealth Acts to streamline regulatory processes, reduce regulatory burden on business, or clarify legislation for the regulated community.