The Modern Regulator Podcast

What happens when the process meant to protect the environment ends up killing off the very species it was designed to save? Danielle Wood is chair of the Productivity Commission, Australia's principal independent policy advisory body on productivity, competition and regulatory reform. She began her career as a graduate and senior research economist with the Commission in 2002, spent nine years at the Grattan Institute, rising to chief executive in 2020, and returned to the PC as chair in Novem

What does it actually take to build a profession out of regulation, from scratch? Marcial Boo has spent three decades in UK public service, running four regulators across entirely different domains – the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Public Health Register during COVID-19, and now the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA). In 2021, he also founded the Institute of Regulation (IoR), built from a handful of volunteers into the UK

In part two, the conversation shifts from the reform story to the bigger questions. Sandra Parker PSM, former head of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) and now a coach and facilitator for senior regulatory leaders through the Jeff Whalan Learning Group, talks about what she sees consistently in incoming regulatory leaders: the gaps that trip them up, the knowledge that nobody hands over at appointment, and what she'd fix if she had a magic wand. Sandra also discusses the New Head of Regulator Pock

What does it actually feel like to move from shaping regulation to enforcing it? Sandra Parker PSM spent eight years as a Commonwealth Deputy Secretary, close to ministers, consulted on everything, and in the room for every major workplace relations decision in Australia. Then in 2018 she stepped across to lead the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), overseeing workplace relations for two million employers and fifteen million workers – and the room went quiet. In part one of this conversation, Sandra d

Rob Hortle spent more than 25 years in workplace regulation, most recently as the inaugural Commissioner of what is now the Workforce Inspectorate Victoria. In this first episode of In Practice – a sub-series of The Modern Regulator Podcast featuring longer conversations with individual practitioners – Paul Leavoy talks with Rob about what it actually takes to build a regulator's capability from the ground up. In this episode he talks about the design and governance decisions that shaped the in

Keith Manch has spent nearly five decades regulating almost every major domain of New Zealand public life, from competition law and consumer affairs to gambling, real estate, maritime safety, aviation, and now land transport. In this episode he talks about regulation as a single discipline, the origins of G-REG and the National Regulators Community of Practice, the hard work of building capability across systems, and why he now says that regulation is a political act. The Modern Regulator (TMR)