The burden of red tape is real; it’s growing, and it’s costing Australians dearly.
According to government data from the Australian Business Licence and Information Service, in the Greater Shepparton City Council area, a livestock farming business may need to comply with up to 136 separate regulatory compliance categories. For cropping farmers, this number is 116.
On top of this, new research from the Institute of Public Affairs has revealed that by the end of the 2025 financial year, the total number of red tape bureaucrats employed by the Federal Government in Canberra will grow to more than 106,000 people — more than enough people to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
At a time when Australia’s economic and productivity growth is low, it is unbelievable that the government will spend almost $15 billion a year to employ bureaucrats whose job it is to make it even harder to do business across the country.
Worse still, the IPA’s research shows that the growth in the red tape bureaucracy is being driven by a hiring splurge in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, which has seen a 76 per cent increase in red tape bureaucrats over the past two financial years.
Such growth in environmental bureaucracy disproportionately affects our regional and rural communities. This is because these communities are home to our critical farming and mining industries, and it is these industries that bear the brunt of rules and regulations created by activists to assuage the demands of the inner city.
Previous research by the IPA estimated that red tape costs the Australian economy $176 billion each year in terms of foregone economic output. This cost is more than just financial, as it captures the many social, economic and humanitarian costs associated with the businesses that were never started, the jobs never created and the ambitions stifled by bureaucratic interference.
Each year, regional business operators spend thousands of hours complying with the multitude of roadblocks governments put in their way. Time spent filling out these forms takes these people away from doing what they do best — growing the food and fibre that feeds and clothes us and creates local jobs.
Unlike families who live and work in rural Australia, city-based red tape bureaucrats are conveniently spared any of the on-the-ground consequences of their decisions — given their decisions impact regions in which they do not reside or industries in which they do not work.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that our resources and agricultural sectors are under attack by the political class in Canberra. All too often, the vital role these sectors play in generating wealth for our nation is unappreciated. It is this very wealth that is invested into the services such as schools, roads and hospitals from which the entire community benefits.
Lachlan Clark,
Research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs