CUTTING THE RED TAPE

[nero_bolt]

This is the Australian Government’s new Cutting Red Tape website.

http://www.cuttingredtape.gov.au/ 

It has information about the Government’s deregulation agenda and tracks our commitment to cut $1 billion of red tape every year.

Families, businesses and community organisations pay the price for poor regulation and you are invited to leave a comment or make a submission on more ways to cut unnecessary and costly red tape.

[boris1gary]

another pathetic decision by this shambles of a government....do they actually know what they are doing....I suppose anything to help their big business mates -

Abolishing of Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee

Amid the widespread cuts to the public sector in last month's federal budget, the scrapping of the government's low-profile but influential Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee went almost unnoticed.

Drawn from the senior ranks of academia, business and the corporate regulator, and run by a staff of three, the committee has quietly worked for more than two decades on potential law reforms, under a mandate to serve the best interests of company directors and investors.

While it was axed under the government's program to ''reduce duplication and increase efficiency'' in government, the closure was also part of its agenda to reduce ''red tape'' for corporations.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/abolishing-of-corporations-and-markets-advisory-committee-20140613-3a...

Powerful continue to triumph over the powerless

"The first duty of government is to protect the powerless from the powerful.'' (Code of Hammurabi, 1772BC.)

Arthur Sinodinos fell on his sword. The Sinodinos affair goes to the heart of the No. 1 threat to democracy: corporate lobbyists.

These people, spawned from the political classes, exploit their connections to influence government decisions.

Assistant treasurer Sinodinos, in his previous post as a director of Australian Water Holdings, stood to earn $20 million for his influence.

Just five days before Christmas, he announced his amendments to the Future of Financial Advice reforms. FOFA had been designed to make advice more transparent.

Although enfeebled by the former government, the reforms did place the interests of the powerless before those of the powerful - before those of the big banks, that is, who control the market for financial advice.

The amendments roll back FOFA. They are a boon for the banks.

Sinodinos had previously worked for the National Australia Bank, one of the four big winners in the FOFA cave-in.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/powerful-continue-to-triumph-over-the-powerless-20140321-358kx.html#i...

[cherry*135]

'Red tape' swathe raises fears of the sweatshop

March 2014

...She [ Michele O'Neil, the national secretary of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia] said the review was the latest in a series of attacks by the government on textile workers. As part of the government's Repeal Day reforms to ''cut red tape'', rules requiring Australian clothing makers bidding for large government contracts to comply with an ethical code of conduct were dropped. The government said about $1 million a year of public funding of Ethical Clothing Australia would also cease.

The ECA, comprising industry groups, large employers and unions, was established in 1996 to help stamp out sweatshop garment manufacturing by promoting a national code of practice. Ms O'Neil said the government's funding cut was ''shocking and short-sighted'' and directly hurt some of Australia's most exploited workers. Outworkers, who work from home sewing machines to produce garments for companies, sometimes illegally underpaid, with staff regularly reporting wages as low as $3 or $4 an hour previously, Ms O'Neil said, although this had started to change in recent years.

The government argues that it is the Fair Work Ombudsman's role to investigate and prosecute allegations of illegal sweatshop labour, and not the role of a joint union-industry, non-government organisation such as Ethical Clothing Australia.

But clothing companies that are part of the ethical clothing agreement said the changes could end up badly hurting the industry.
Among these is Cue, a family-owned firm started in 1968 and now the largest manufacturer of womenswear in Australia. Cue does 80 per cent of its manufacturing locally.

Its chief operating officer, Damien Peirce-Grant, said local manufacturing was the centre of Cue's brand and identity, and the company had ''a genuine concern'' that the decision to cut all funding to Ethical Clothing Australia would significantly increase the exploitation of textile workers.

Ultimately, he warned, the changes could lead to ''the deterioration or collapse'' of the industry.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/red-tape-swath-raises-fears-of-the-sweatshop-20140329-35qez.html#ixzz...