CHAIR—Welcome. Is there an opening statement?

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Mr Wonder—I will make a brief opening statement. I will make it short and sweet. I was just going to update you on where a few of our reports are in their passage through our systems, which the committee might find useful. The first group I will mention is our inquiry reports. We have a report on waste management which we have just finalised and forwarded to the government. We have several other draft inquiry reports, including, first of all, the commission’s report on road and rail freight infrastructure. That is a pricing related inquiry.

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CHAIR—When is that one due?

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Mr Wonder—A final report is due with the government in late December but a draft was issued on that recently. The second one, which is well known to this committee, I suspect, is the commission’s report on the Tasmanian freight subsidy arrangements. We have issued a draft report and the final report is due with the government in late December.

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CHAIR—It is certainly well known to Senator Sherry.

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Senator SHERRY—I am surprised you are issuing a final report given the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday!

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Mr Wonder—Is that a question or shall I finish?

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Senator SHERRY—No, I will get to the question.

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CHAIR—I think that was an amusing observation.

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Senator SHERRY—Yes; sorry.

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Mr Wonder—The third one is a draft report on price regulation of airport services. That draft report has also been issued and a final is due with the government in early January. On the research studies the government has asked us to do, we prepared a final of our report Rural water use and the environment. That was released in August following a draft report earlier in the year.

We have several other research studies underway. One is on standards and accreditation. We released a draft of that in July. A final is expected later this month. We have released a draft today on public support for science and innovation, and a final of that study is due in March next year. The third one is a research study on performance benchmarking of Australian business regulation. We expect to circulate a draft of that report later this month to COAG. A final will be made available in February next year.

There are a couple of other things that I should mention. One thing is our work on the COAG National Reform Agenda. We are required to complete a report on that by the end of November. Finally, I should mention the establishment in the commission of a new Office of Best Practice Regulation, which is a successor organisation to the Office of Regulation Review. That new office follows the government’s response to the report of the task force on reducing regulatory burdens on business. The new office will not only report on compliance and adequacy of regulatory impact statements but also take on specifically the roles of training and technical advice on regulatory impact statements, cost-benefit and risk analysis and compliance cost estimation for Australian government departments and agencies. That is all I wanted to say.

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CHAIR—Thank you. Have you seen the second editorial in this morning’s Australian Financial Review?

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Mr Wonder—I have seen the article in relation to our science study. Is that the one you are referring to?

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CHAIR—No, it is not. That is a different article. Let me read to you the relevant portion of the editorial in this morning’s Australian Financial Review under the headline, ‘This is no time for reform fatigue’. It says:

The Council of Australian governments should lift its game or the country will miss out on the benefits of an ambitious reform agenda. That exact sentence does not appear in the carefully crafted words of the Productivity Commission, but it’s the clear message in the commission’s annual report.

Is that the clear message in your annual report?

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Mr Wonder—I can say what the message is in our annual report, and I hope it is clear.

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CHAIR—Do not let me put words in your mouth. I would not do that.

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Mr Wonder—The message that we have in our annual report in terms of the conclusions we have drawn are that we believe there are three matters that are essential to securing the future progress on the National Reform Agenda. The first is in respect of establishing a robust governance framework for the agenda. The second surrounds the effective implementation plans that might be there for the first tranche of reforms. The third is settling the financial arrangements that would support the reform process. So we are very positive in this annual report piece that you refer to, which we tabled in parliament on 31October.

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CHAIR—That is your 2005-06 annual report?

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Mr Wonder—That is correct.

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CHAIR—I am looking at your 2004-05 financial report, which seems to contain the same message. You have been calling our attention to this problem for a while.

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Mr Wonder—In the 2004-05 annual report we reported on a workshop paper that we prepared. You might recall a workshop that was held in Canberra in October or November last year—I cannot remember which month now. It was on federalism and it was held at Old Parliament House here in Canberra. It was prior, of course, to the government’s decisions in February this year on the National Reform Agenda. So things have moved on quite a bit. We had a lot more material to look at and consider when we finalised this article for the annual report for 2005-06. Indeed, since that time we have been asked to undertake a major study that we will report to the COAG senior officials on by the end of November. That was the piece I referred to earlier in my remarks. We are required to undertake a major study looking at the potential benefits and effects of the National Reform Agenda, and we have undertaken a major study on that front.

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CHAIR—I wonder, Mr Wonder, whether when the Productivity Commission undertakes that study, it is going to look at the issue of wastage, and handling and transaction costs, in circumstances in which the states take responsibility for infrastructure projects funded wholly or partly by the Commonwealth. I want to reassure my friend Senator Sherry that I am not making a partisan point; it is just a coincidence that at the moment all of the state governments are in the hands of the Australian Labor Party. I am obviously making a generalisation, but it does seem me, as a senator from the state of Queensland, which has major infrastructure issues as you know, that so often when the Commonwealth provides a large tranche of money to the Queensland state government for expenditure on major infrastructure, in particular and notoriously road infrastructure, it is like pouring money into a black hole.

The disjunction between the funding of the project and the completion of the project by the state government is just so manifest that one is exasperated as to how a state government could possibly be so inefficient and negligent with public money. I am sure that that is the story not just in Queensland, and I am sure it would be the case if the political complexions at the different levels of government were different. The issue is to