Danielle Wood on resisting the red tape impulse
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 November 2023, the first woman to lead the Commission or any of its predecessor agencies in more than a century.
In this conversation, Wood walks through the case study behind her essay The Red Tape Impulse, an endangered frog whose habitat restoration was approved too late to save it, and explains why she treats the tabloid test, now the TikTok test, as the real driver of regulatory risk aversion. She also sets out why fixing planning and housing regulation is the one problem she would solve overnight with a magic wand.
This episode covers:
- The green and gold bell frog case study, and what it reveals about regulatory fragmentation and the cost of not knowing which door to walk through
- Why 55 per cent of ASX 200 board time now goes to compliance, up from 25 per cent a decade ago, and what that does to business appetite for risk
- The tabloid test versus the TikTok test, and why a charter for regulatory honesty could do for red tape what budget honesty charters did for fiscal policy
- The case for cutting back excessive stakeholder consultation, a theme from Wood's speech on regulating for growth
- Why more than 75 per cent of land in most Australian capital cities is zoned for only one or two storeys, and what gentle density could unlock
- Wood's approach to AI, treating it as a last resort for new regulation but a genuine tool for regulators themselves
- Wood's magic wand answer: broad scale upzoning for gentle density across Australia's capital cities
Danielle also shares what's on her reading list right now. Her Substack recommendations:
- Eating Policy, Jennifer Pahlka's reflections on state capacity
- Derek Thompson, of Abundance fame
- Zac Gross, for thoughtful takes on Australian macroeconomics
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This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.