Effective consultations, natural disaster plan among CPA Australia’s pre-budget submissions to ACT

One of Australia’s largest accounting associations has called on the ACT government to avoid running simultaneous consultations so that interested stakeholders can participate more fully in policy development. CPA Australia has sent an eight-page pre-budget submission to the ACT government recommending engagement with a broad cross-section of stakeholders to develop laws and regulations for the territory.

The submission says that the government should measure the quality of engagement it receives during consultation processes.

“Effective stakeholder engagement by government is essential to good policy development and its successful implementation, as well as driving Canberra’s economic transformation,” the submission says.

“Effective engagement includes governments engaging with a broad cross-section of stakeholders and giving the community sufficient time to consider proposed policy, law and administrative changes. Running too many consultations at similar times should be avoided.”

CPA Australia also asked the ACT government to consider the development of what it calls scalable and standardised disaster support for small businesses.

“Natural disasters brought on by climate change will occur with increasing frequency and severity, yet there is no standard form of direct government assistance for affected business. This delays the delivery of support following a disaster,” the submission says.

“It also adds to the work pressures on our members as they must learn about each new disaster support program to help their small business clients and employers — especially where they are doing this in different jurisdictions (i.e. for their ACT and NSW clients).”

Establishing a disaster plan would, the submissions notes, also mean that responses to calls for assistance would be faster.

“Having a ready-made disaster support program for business, which is based on robust risk analysis and evidence-based policy, would enable future governments to implement tried, tested and sound disaster support quickly,” CPA Australia said.

“It would also help advisers quickly aid their small business clients to apply for the support as they wouldn’t have to learn about new programs or manage differing requirements.”

This article was first published on The Mandarin.