National Competition Policy

Economic reform in Australia certainly did not start with the Hilmer Report — it has been underway for the last 15 or so years. It began with financial deregulation and floating of the Australian dollar in the 1980s and the reduction of tariff protection, and includes more recent initiatives such as moving from the centralized wage fixing system to more flexible enterprise bargaining arrangements, restructuring of government business enterprises, developments in public administration and most recently the focus on competition policy.     

National Competition Policy: The Downside

Identifying the ‘downside’ of competition policy raises the question of whether there is an ‘up-side’. Competition is supposed to drive the organisers of commodity production to minimise the costs they have to bear in some short to medium term, within environments more or less circumscribed by government regulations. The actual period tends to be that for which the providers of finance are prepared to wait for returns after a poorly performing company is restructured. Economists used to say that cost minimisation requires an industry structure in which there are many independent producers. Nowadays, more enlightened writers speak of ensuring that the market positions held by existing producers are contestable by prospective new producers. The question of what government in Australia may do to establish competition in this sense of competition has recently focussed on the desirable re-organisation of public enterprises, perhaps especially those that exist at the level of the states. So what are the dimensions of the ‘downside’ of opening the market positions occupied by public enterprises to contestation by private companies, especially those which are monopolies? The answer takes a large measure of the gloss off the Hilmer promises. The problems to be addressed are: the limit put on contestability where there is an element of natural monopoly; the tendency for cost minimisation to depend on the tighter management of labour; and, the difficulty of insisting simultaneously on both ‘competition’ and the satisfaction of ‘community service obligations’ (CSOs).     

Why National Competition Policy?

Strategies to enhance Australia's international competitiveness need to embrace reform of key infrastructure service industries, reform of the regulatory environment, industrial relations reform and taxation reform. Key aspects of this reform agenda can only be addressed through a shared commitment by all levels of government. Ownership of the public utilities responsible for the nation's key infrastructure networks and services is divided among commonwealth, state and territory (and local) governments. Achieving a substantial lift in the productivity of these industries and ensuring the emergence of truly national infrastructure networks relies on agreement by all governments to public utility reform and the removal of barriers to cross-border competition. Moreover, the regulation of industries, occupations and businesses is primarily the responsibility of state and territory governments, hence regulatory reform also requires a cooperative approach by all governments.
While most jurisdictions have taken some steps to reform public utilities and to deregulate certain product markets, to date reform has been piecemeal. A more systematic approach to removal of impediments to competition across the board is likely to be necessary to lift the overall competitiveness of the Australian economy. The agreement by the commonwealth and all states and territories to implement the National Competition Policy (NCP) not only provides the necessary shared commitment to reform across the board, it also provides the rewards and sanctions needed to sustain that commitment in the face of certain resistance from vested interests.     

Microeconomic Reform and National Competition Policy: Misconceptions and Problems

Microeconomic reform and the so-called National Competition Policy (NCP) have entered political discourse but often with little discussion of their specific meaning. The terminology tends to be emotionally and intuitively appealing. It implies that any microeconomic reform per se is necessarily 'good' for the achievement of economic efficiency. Moreover, misconceptions about the meaning of economic efficiency frequently result in the belief that a higher level of competition is always 'good' for the achievement of that objective.
While there are many features in the new competition policy which deserve the wide acceptance and support it has been given, there are also aspects of it which do not stand up to closer scrutiny. It is those aspects, including the problems which will arise when ambitious but vague principles are put into practice, which will receive attention in this article.     

The Implications of National Competition Policy

The Competition Policy Reform Bill 1995 is part of a national policy package which aims to free up competition in Australian markets. The objective is to systematically remove anti-competitive behaviour so that efficiency is improved to the public benefit.
While one can endorse the concept that economic efficiency is best served in a purely competitive market, where businesses can get on with their responsibilitiy to maximise profits, concerns exist as to whether it is possible to impose legislatively and unilaterally an economic principle or philosophy on a nation that will achieve its lofty objectives.
These proposals were developed before the 1996 federal election.     

National Competition Policy and the Australian Taxi Industry

This article outlines the Australian Taxi Industry Association's (ATIA) perspective on the development of the National Competition Policy (NCP). The ATIA has been actively involved in the issue since the establishment of the Hilmer Inquiry into National Competition Policy in 1992.
The Australian taxi industry is regulated by state and territory governments. Taxi industry regulations are designed to facilitate the provision of high-quality and comprehensive taxi services to the community and disadvantaged groups. One element of this regulatory structure involves the sale, or lease, of taxi plates by state and territory governments as a revenue-raising measure.
This revenue-raising by governments produces two different effects. On the one hand taxi plate owners having purchased taxi plates from the government (or leased) have an interest in the value of the plate, as well as in continuing to provide quality services. On the other hand some observers see taxi plate values as inherently unacceptable and needing to be reduced, or abolished, by allowing unrestricted access to the taxi industry.
These competing views have provided much of the impetus for the debate associated with the taxi industry and the NCP. The industry believes that NCP has the potential to impact adversely on taxi 'markets' and consumer interests.     

Consumers/Citizens and the National Competition Policy

NCP provides a framework for reform ranging from the introduction of competition in energy and water services to the dismantling of agricultural marketing boards. The effects on consumers will depend upon whether their interests are narrowly construed as preoccupations with price and choice of services or whether they extend to broad social justice and equity considerations. The 'marketisation' of government services is not concerned with distributional equity, and budget funding of CSOs is necessary to address distributional inequities. But domestic consumers will remain captive to monopoly franchises and competition objectives add pressure for the 'contracting out' of government services and the winding back of cross-subsidies which have traditionally operated in favour of household consumers.
NCP will transform the public from 'citizen' to 'consumer'. Consumer advocates have risen to these new challenges and grasped the opportunity presented by industry restructuring to propose a range of mechanisms for consumer empowerment. This article will briefly identify some of the key issues for consumers in the implementation of the NCP and demonstrate the complexity of any attempt to assess the threats and opportunities for consumers. Particular attention will be given to the reforms to the electricity industries in NSW and Victoria.     

National Competition Policy and its Implications for Local Government

Two aspects of National Competition Policy (NCP) are likely to be the catalyst of change in Australian local government (LG): competitive neutrality and the reform of public monopolies. Competitive neutrality will be achieved in LG through the imposition of tax equivalents, removal of debt guarantees and cross-subsidisation deemed not to be in the public interest. The reform of public monopolies will open more functions to competition.
But other items of the NCP are also of significance to LG. The imposition of prices oversight of LG services will make these more cost reflective. Legislative reviews at LG level will produce deregulation in some cases and greater uniformity in others while the issue of allowing private access to LG assets has competitive potential in relation to the services and provision of roads, parks and sewerage treatment.
We emphasise the importance of recognising the present benefits of current LG operations and cite the current proposal to privatise Tasmania's water and sewerage services as an example. NCP has the potential to produce further LG boundary amalgamations, or to accelerate regional cooperation as an alternative. The role of cross-border and competitive tendering in this respect are highlighted. Finally, we analyse the implications of the NCP for the Local Government Grants Commission process.     

The Greening of the Grey: National Competition Policy and the Environment

Concern for environmental degradation is now widespread, and has penetrated key policy institutions such as the National Competition Council (NCC) - the body overseeing National Competition Policy. While the NCC's primary focus is on promoting competition, it acknowledges the importance of environmental considerations. Such a body thus represents the contemporary Ecological Modernsiation approach to environmental policy-making. Ecological Modernisation posits that there can be a reconciliation and synthesis between economic and ecological goals. This paper investigates this claim by exploring the relationship between competition and the environment in the three areas of electricity, regulatory review and rural water.     

National Competition Policy: Key Lessons for Policy-making from its Implementation

This article will first briefly describe the National Competition Policy, then set out some of the major results achieved to date, before focusing on the key lessons that can be learned from the experience of its implementation.     

National Competition Policy,Regulatory Reform & Australian Federalism*

Changes are afoot in Australia's federal arrangements concerning competition policy. While many of the proposals to enlarge the Commonwealth's sphere of influence are played out in the media, other shifts are more subtle. This article examines one of those areas of change. It looks at National Competition Policy and in particular, its regulatory reform components. It argues that the approach adopted in the 1995 agreement, which was characterised by broad principles, meticulous monitoring and substantial financial carrots, has provided the Commonwealth with a useful tool for effectively intervening in areas that have been until now, matters of state responsibility.     

National Competition Policy — Its Evolution and Implementation: A Study in Intergovernmental Relations

The second reading speech on the Competition Policy Reform Bill 1995 described the policy as 'the most important single development in micro-economic reform in recent years'. The speech went on to describe the vision of the Hilmer Report 'for a national competition policy in which the commonwealth, states and territories cooperated to ensure that universal and uniformly applied rules of market conduct apply to all market participants regardless of their form of ownership'. This article considers how this vision was translated into reality.     

政策网络：概念、类型及发展前景

随着传统政府治理模式的衰微,20世纪70年代末以来政策网络逐渐成为政策分析领域的主流话语和研究途径.政策网络是一群互赖行动者之间建立某种稳定程度的社会关系形态,以促成政策方案的形成或发展.学术界普遍认为可以将政策网络划分为作为分析工具的利益协调模式和作为实践创新的治理模式两种典范.尽管作为政策网络理论仍存在种种缺陷,但是它已经展现出巨大的生命力,对于理解公共政策以及国家与社会关系具有重要的意义.     

The Potential for Local Diversity in Implementation of the National Competition Policy

Australian governments have embarked on a major effort to improve the competitiveness of the economy by adoption of a national competition policy (NCP). The policy extends the scope of trade practices legislation to encompass the public sector and professions, modernises policy in the areas of pricing and access powers, and is intended to revitalise the microeconomic reform agenda. The intended result is an integrated national economy, more uniform and consistent business regulation across the country and improved levels of competitiveness. But, there is an inherent tension between the imperatives for harmonisation, uniformity and reduced regulation on the one hand and tendencies for local diversity and increased regulation on the other. This article explores this tension with illustrations taken from three key aspects of the policy — opportunities for institutional diversity, treatment of the public interest and the prognosis for an integrated national, competitive market. The potential for each jurisdiction in Australia to take diverse and problematic approaches to the implementation of competition policy is then re-examined through the mechanism of a specialised case study involving the regulation of access to gas pipelines in Western Australia.     

Interstate Competition and Welfare Policy

In 1996, the federal government terminated the Aid to Familieswith Dependent Children (AFDC) program and replaced it withthe Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF).Many powers once held by the federal government are now beingused by state governments. Will welfare assistance be redesignedand expanded or will states "race to the bottom?" This issueis investigated by examining state welfare policy choices duringthe latter years of AFDC(1976–1994). Because each stateunder AFDC had the authority to set the level of its welfareguarantee for families that had no income, it is possible toestimate the effects of interstate competition on AFDC guaranteelevels. By estimating a spatial autocorrelation coefficientwhile controlling for theoretically relevant variables and statefixed effects, this study finds evidence that states are sensitiveto the welfare policies of their competitors.     

公共政策仿真方法:原理、应用与前景

从方法论的视角讨论了公共政策仿真的ABM方法原理、应用和前景。学界就社会科学研究应该遵循的方法论问题一直存在着不同取向的争论,在就此形成的认识论连续统的框架下,社会仿真的诸多概念模型也都有各自在"通则论-个体论"的连续统中的位置,而目前公共政策仿真的ABM方法无疑在这样的连续统中占据着重要地位。公共政策过程的复杂性制约了传统研究方法的效果,而基于场景分析的公共政策系统分析和基于机制的政策主体行为分析使公共政策仿真的ABM方法突破了传统研究方法的窠臼,通过科学的建模技术以及严谨的检验环节,结合政策结果的3D场景呈现和群决策平台,为公共政策领域开创了独具科学性和人本性的激动人心的应用前景。     

Principle vs. Pragmatism: Policy Shifts and Political Competition

This article investigates the electoral effect of party policy shifts. I argue that whether party policy shifts are damaging or rewarding depends on whether the shift occurs in the pragmatic or principled issue domain. On pragmatic issues, voters value "getting things done." Policy shifts in this domain signal responsiveness to the changing environment and are likely to be rewarded. Principled issues, however, concern core beliefs and values. Any policy shift in this domain is a sign of inconsistency and lack of credibility, which is likely to lead to voter withdrawal. These arguments are supported by evidence from 23 advanced democracies over a period of 40 years.     

中国生育水平预测与生育政策展望

中国目前的总和生育率存在争议,而未来总和生育率的变动趋势对生育政策的制定有重要意义.本文基于矫正过的生育率数据,使用随机预测方法,对1998年以后的生育水平进行了预测.结果发现,到2028年中国的总和生育率有可能降低到1.3的超低生育水平.在介绍当前生育政策争议的基础上,讨论了其它低生育水平国家的经验和对策,并给出了政策建议.     

Blair's Commission for Africa: Problems and Prospects for UK Policy

This article examines the recommendations contained within the Commission for Africa's report Our Common Interest , and asks what they might mean for the UK's Africa policies. After discussing the choice of the Commissioners and summarising the main recommendations made in their report, the article identifies some of the central problems raised but not resolved by the Commission in the relation to issues of security, political economy and governance. The article concludes that the Commission's report raised the profile of an important set of issues but neither resolved them conceptually nor set out a persuasive plan to implement its numerous recommendations. In particular, the Commission did not convincingly explain how neo-patrimonial regimes in Africa could be reformed to ensure that they pursue genuinely national development policies instead of the current strategies that benefit their supporters and weaken their political opponents.