WA business owners are being frustrated by butt-covering bureaucracy
WA Energy Minister Reece Whitby raised some eyebrows back in February when he said he suspected 'there's a nerdy little bureaucrat in an agency in Canberra somewhere who's trying to cover his butt'.
The issue at hand was Woodside's North West Shelf expansion, which after going through a six-year approvals process with the WA regulator (in addition to being subject to numerous, lengthy legal challenges) was subject to a further game of federal political football.
The Woodside experience of delay, disruption, duplicative and cumbersome approvals processes does not help Western Australia, or Australia, attract the investment dollars which companies will otherwise put to use developing resources and creating jobs elsewhere in the world.
But it's not just about Woodside and other large companies who are, relatively speaking, more able to deal with this kind of costly (and sometimes vexatious) dithering and delay.
As the WA Liberal spokesperson for deregulation and public sector reform, I've heard firsthand how excessive legislation and red tape is stifling free enterprise and entrepreneurship.
From farmers in the Wheatbelt to retail shopkeepers in Perth, West Australians who want to run a business and build a future for their family and their community are frustrated.
They are frustrated by the very same kind of 'butt-covering bureaucracies' that Whitby described.
They are frustrated not only by the constantly expanding rules and costs placed on them by government, but by the time it takes to obtain permission to do anything.
And by the fact that they are part of the ever-shrinking tax base asked to pay the salaries of those who dream up new rules and fail to deliver a reasonable level of service to those asked to comply with them.
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