Opaque policy-making hinders Australia's development

摘要

Unelected officials are ignoring industry warnings about damaging new regulations, hiding behind needlessly restrictive secrecy provisions and keeping Ministers in the dark. At a meeting of Building Ministers in Adelaide last month, bureaucrats all but confirmed that changes affecting billions of dollars' worth of industry and thousands of Australian manufacturing jobs would be decided in closed-door meetings and presented to Ministers as final outcomes. These changes were outlined in more detail in the August-September edition of this publication and relate to significant reductions in allowances for non-general and architectural lighting under the National Construction Code.