A quick look at the ‘Repeal Day’ concept – almost right
The Australian Government has announced a ‘Repeal Day’, intended to be used to axe the existence of hundreds of outdated laws. The concept is a good one, though for me, doesn’t quite get the Australian Parliament into a forward looking setting in how it could develop FUTURE legislation. So what could be done instead and what are the Repeal Day risks?
Repeal Day is not a new concept with the US Government often spending time wiping out old laws in one big all encompassing sitting. The idea is both necessary and overdue and I can see this idea becoming an annual or ‘first event’ headline act of new Governments across Australia.
To give you a small personal example of outdated laws, in my first career out of school I had cause to use a piece of law, a by-law of a large council, which made it an offence for people to walk on the right hand side of the footpath. Yes, please do re-read that and then understand that the law dated back to the latter part of the 19thC. So there I was, in the late part of the 20thC applying a law from around 1865 or so. It seems ridiculous and I’m not sure if that law still exists, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was yet to be repealed – law and order for society and all that.
And so now we have a whole raft of laws that were ‘good ideas’ (or not) in their day. As a small business owner I’d really look forward to not having to do BAS every quarter or deal with the multiple requirements of superannuation payments. There’s many others. And so the Repeal Day appeals. But there are risks
The core risk is that in the passion for cutting red tape or intention to simplify the burdens of legal compliance, good laws get thrown out. There’s the risk that this idea of simplification becomes a political football where a repeal is targeted in a heavy handed fashion. That is as likely as it is unlikely.
Overall though the greatest risk is that laws with good intentions that are still valid, are scrapped because they were poorly constructed – a solid and worthwhile principal is discarded because of the existence of a clumsy or heavy handed nature in how the law applies.
Which is why Repeal Day doesn’t quite set us up for FUTURE legal developments. For those who’ve read some of my thoughts before, you’ll know that for years I’ve been calling for a ‘Sunset Clause’ on all legislation. The sunset clause would make all legislation self repealing making a Repeal Day irrelevant. It would also turn the focus of Parliament towards updating laws. Trying to keep pace with IT developments in Privacy for instance, is beyond the realm of most Governments. A sunset clause would see the law developed and then consistently reassessed to ensure the law is still meeting the intentions and relevancy framing. A refresh, new sunset clause and on it goes. If no longer required, the law would sunset and nothing else need be done.
I think the Repeal Day concept could be useful if treated carefully, and not as a sweeping of ideology. That’s its big risk. Developing Laws with a Sunset Clause brings Parliament up to date as a forward thinking legislative body
Columbia University’s Earth Institute have just made publicly available their World Happiness Report, joining the expanding list of happiness reports emerging ultimately from Bhutan’s Happiness Index. There’s some interesting results in this one and some that you might expect were more obvious, like the idea that at a certain point, more money won’t make you…
Read More >Whilst the main thrust of Australian economic activity is said to be in the hands of the Federal Government, we should not overlook the significant role that Local Council Government’s can have. As the Federal Government wrestles with falling taxation revenues and an apparent inability to get the message across about distributing the income of…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber chats with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin about the challenges facing the Northern Territory, the farming and mining sectors. In summing up the emerging signs of a clash between agricultural uses of land and land use for resource and mining needs, Marcus uses the phrase ‘Eat or Extract’ as the…
Read More >As most of you know I nominated this year as the 2012 International Year of Resilience because frankly, that’s what I reckon large chunks of the world need right now. The twitter feed is #2012YearofResilience. I sent a few of these tips out at the start of the year and have seen a few of…
Read More >A new city is due to emerge in Darwin over the coming couple of years and the key question is – what sort of attention is being paid to weather related disasters in the design phase? Paul Dale on ABC Radio Darwin chats with futurist Marcus Barber about planning and weather. You can download the…
Read More >Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ is best known for its second verse – “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains”. As vast tracts of Australia again face the prospect of massive floods I wonder if our Urban Planners ever consider the significance of…
Read More >Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…
Read More >There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…
Read More >Simple question really. Or is it? In this quick article I provide an overview of the difference between strategy that is D.E.A.D and A.L.I.V.E Think of it as a potential ‘do this’ collection for your Organisation You can download the article for free here – ‘Is your Organisational Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?’
Read More >Lots of thoughts for the year already underway, with some covering a range of ideas from ‘don’t cut corners on relative incidentals when the project is significant for you’ to ‘you can’t change your approach if you keep thinking inside the same box’. But for now a reminder about planning for your future: If you…
Read More >