Regulatory shambles is face of complacency

http://www.copyright link/opinion/e...-of-complacency-20151104-gkqmuz#ixzz3qWg7A5WZ

Meanwhile, the NSW state government is proposing paying resources company Metgasco $25 million for illegally cancelling its coal seam gas drilling licence. Mike Baird's government is paying a company to not undertake economic activity because of whipped up political activism from Nationals, greenies and disgruntled farmers on the central and north coast of the state. No doubt the protesters still want gas piped into their homes, their electricity bills kept down, and government spending increased on health, disability and education programs.

Thus goes the Australian complacency bred by nearly one-quarter of a century of uninterrupted growth and a two-thirds increase in per capita real incomes: a state owned electricity company that had to be regulated to stop featherbedding, a workplace regulator that said that it has to keep featherbedding and a state government that pays a gas drilling company not to drill for gas.