International Law

COAG performance report released

By David Jacobson

The COAG Reform Council has released its first report to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) on performance against the National Partnership Agreement to Deliver a Seamless National Economy.

The National Partnership Agreement to Deliver a Seamless National Economy is an agreement by all Australian governments to deliver more consistent, better regulation across Australia, and reduce compliance costs on business, restrictions on competition, and distortions in the allocation of resources across the country.

The report by the COAG Reform Council is an assessment of the performance of the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments against the 2008?09 implementation milestones?across the 36 streams of business regulation and competition reform which all nine governments agreed to implement.

The CRC report:
? notes that overall, there has been good or satisfactory progress against 18 of the 27 deregulation priorities and four of the eight competition reforms;
? makes four recommendations aimed at making elements of the NP reform agenda more transparent, meaningful and measureable (which COAG has agreed to adopt); and
? incorporates in its progress assessment several National Reform Agenda priorities previously agreed by COAG in 2006 and 2007 (in relation to the trade measurement, rail safety, national construction code and energy competition reforms) that it considers have not been met and are relevant to some of the NP Implementation Plan milestones.

Full post as published by Australian Regulatory Compliance Review on February 24, 2010 (boomark / email).