Compliance Costs: “Government Just Don’t Get It!"

Business Compliance Costs: “Government Just Don’t Get It!”

Creeping compliance costs turning into a case study of how NOT to encourage business to support growth:

More generous holiday provisions Review of the labour laws Privy Council changes and setting up a new Supreme Court Tougher OSH rules New local government processes, Modified RMA, Multi-tiered transport processes

And then we wake today to find:

A new “security compliance fee” on business to meet higher standards being imposed on trade by the United States.

Michael Barnett, chief executive of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, said the cost to business of each new compliance measure that Government has unveiled this year may be small on its own, but when added together they represent a significant impact.

For a government to impose a levy on trade at a time it is claiming to want more growth, wants to encourage more businesses to get into exporting, claims to be implementing a strategy to reduce compliance costs to business and has a record surplus, “stretches credibility to breaking point,” said Mr Barnett.

It is contradiction for the Government to claim, as it has in the past month, that compliance cost reduction is a top priority, when in the next breath it unveils yet another measure that increases the cost of doing business.

Little wonder that business is increasingly cynical that recent talk about reducing compliance costs and wanting to be a business-friendly Government will ever be translated into action.

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