Agenda

• Looking back at significant regulatory reform to understand what sustained reform has delivered 
• Examining why the way we do reform needs to improve to address why good policy intent doesn't always translate into results 
• Understanding why now is the right moment to lift our reform capability to create both the mandate and the opportunity

• Understanding why productivity growth has stalled since 2016, and what the Productivity Commission recommendations mean for the regulatory reform work already underway
• Discussing how poorly designed or implemented regulation is a handbrake on economic growth and what that means for regulators now
• Examining what "no single policy reform can bring productivity growth back to its long-term average" means in practice, to understand why regulators need to make pro-productivity decisions that support and reinforce each other
• Recognising that reform pressure is not only economic to ensure incident-driven and social-sector reform are part of the same national picture

• Spotlighting how the Commission is consolidating all trade remedy powers into a single, modernised system to understand what it takes to streamline your own scheme without losing regulatory effectiveness
• Examining how the Commission simplified application pathways for small and medium businesses to cut the red tape and compliance barriers that keep the people your scheme serves from using it
• Adopting the Commission's approach to working closely with industry mid-reform to keep your regulated community engaged while major change is still taking shape

• Learning from public-domain case studies of both successful and unsuccessful reform implementation, recognising that every regulator’s context differs
• Drawing on childcare regulation as a live example of incident-driven reform, where failure in one jurisdiction triggered national change
• Identifying the early warning signs that an implementation approach is not working, and how to course-correct without losing sector confidence

• Applying a framework to support draw your agency’s regulatory oversight and governance
• Honouring the past, and positioning for the future to extend the options available to decision-makers before risks scale
• Embedding resilient concepts into everyday regulatory practice to spot emerging threats and opportunities early

• Learning how other regulators have acted ahead of the data to judge when the precautionary principle justifies early intervention
• Examining how peers have balanced political pressure, fast-moving technology and constrained resources to make defensible decisions under uncertainty
• Applying lessons from agencies that moved early on emerging risks to avoid adding cumulative burden to your regulated sectors

• How is your agency adapting its evaluation frameworks for AI systems that are continuously learning and changing in real-time?
• What does evidence-based, data-driven, outcomes-focused oversight look like when you're still building the data capability to support it?
• Where is the greatest gap between how an AI system performs in an assessment and how it behaves in a real-world regulatory environment?
• Where does human judgement remain non-negotiable as AI automates more regulatory intelligence and policy evaluation?

• Learning how the ATO shifted super guarantee enforcement from employer self-assessment to regulator-assessed charges to reduce the compliance burden your scheme places on the people it regulates
• Examining how the ATO rebuilt the payments ecosystem to make compliance feasible before demanding it from your regulated community
• Applying the ATO's use of graduated penalties and incentives for voluntary disclosure to build an enforcement model that rewards early honesty rather than punishing discovery

• Understanding what changes when regulatory stewardship becomes a chief executive's obligation
• Discussing the New Zealand definition of stewardship to gain a clearer picture of where there is room to improve
• Applying lessons from New Zealand's advanced regulatory planning and annual reporting requirements to identify the transparency and accountability measures most worth pursuing here

• Understanding how Coal LSL approached one of the most significant reforms in its history, balancing legislative intent, regulatory effectiveness and stakeholder expectations.
• Exploring the leadership, governance and implementation considerations involved in transforming legislative change into sustainable regulatory practice.
• Identifying practical lessons for regulators, executives and boards responsible for overseeing major reform programs, managing complexity and delivering lasting outcomes.

• Understanding how the Commission's expanded regulatory powers translate into a more credible compliance posture, and what that shift signals for regulators seeking sharper tools of their own
• Applying the lessons of moving to an outcomes-focused framework to reorient your own regulatory model around the results providers deliver
• Learning how to move from compliance-on-paper to compliance-in-practice, so your agency can design audit and assessment approaches that test real-world performance and lived experience

• Designing complex enterprise change to set direction while staying adaptive to changing circumstances
• Navigating uncertainty in policy settings to keep transformation moving when the ground rules are still being decided above you
• Harnessing the tools and techniques that turn significant legislative change into everyday regulatory practice

• Understanding how $60 billion in annual illicit funds exposed the regulatory gap created by leaving real estate, legal and accounting sectors outside the AML framework
• Applying the design principle of creating transparency obligations proportionate to transaction risk without turning everyday businesses into investigators
• Recognising how aligning with international standards closes the cross-border exploitation gaps that organised crime relies on

• Unpacking how the new National Environmental Standards and binding ministerial powers reset a regulator's operating mandate
• Tracing where the mitigation hierarchy, net gain requirements and narrowed exemptions create obligations for environment-adjacent agencies
• Weighing how increased penalties and Environment Protection Orders will shift stakeholder expectations across the regulatory landscape

• Unpacking how the ACCC is preparing to enforce a deliberately principles-based prohibition to make broad, open-textured mandates operational in your own scheme
• Tracing the ACCC's use of existing misleading conduct law to pursue subscription traps and dark patterns before the new prohibition lands
• Harnessing guidance, enforcement priorities and early case selection to shape the boundaries of a new regime when the legislation leaves them undefined

• How can regulators identify the key pinch points stalling regulatory reform to target where streamlining will have the greatest impact?
• How is sector-specific fast-tracking being used to unclog the reform pipeline?
• How can we best distinguish which pathway is best for the reform pipeline - reform driven by new legislation from reform initiated by regulators themselves?

Reform never unfolds the way the plan says it will. Every regulator who has lived through one knows the tensions that surface between theory and delivery.

That's why this masterclass is built around a real, contemporary case study rather than abstract principles: you'll step through the reform process one regulator adopted, examining what worked, what strained, and why. You'll then test that experience against the three Regulator Performance (RMG 128) principles that define best practice, through hands-on group work.

Drawing on the convenor's first-hand reform experience and research, you'll leave knowing where your own reform's tensions are likely to emerge.

By the end of this masterclass, you will be able to:

• Anticipating where reform creates tension with day-to-day regulatory activities, so delivery pressures don't blindside your implementation plan
• Recognising how reform reshapes compliance activities and stakeholder relationships to manage the friction before it hardens into resistance
• Sharpening how your agency understands and manages risk through a period of deliberate change
• Applying the continuous improvement and trust-building principle from RMG 128 to strengthen your reform's legitimacy as it progresses
• Embedding risk-based, data-driven practice into reform decisions so your choices stand up to scrutiny
• Strengthening collaboration and engagement with co-regulators, industry and community throughout the reform cycle

A regulatory strategy can clearly describe what a regulator wants to achieve and how it intends to regulate. The challenge is translating that intent into the systems, capability, decisions and behaviours needed to deliver it in practice.

Regulators commonly describe their approach as risk-based, proportionate, harm-focused, intelligence-led, educative or outcomes-focused. But these commitments only become meaningful when they influence how regulatory priorities are set, resources are directed, decisions are made and regulatory staff exercise judgement in practice.

This practical masterclass explores the architecture that connects regulatory intent with regulatory practice.

Working through the strategic, operational and tactical dimensions of regulation, participants will examine how regulatory posture shapes strategic choices; what an organisation needs to put in place to make those choices operational; and what happens when regulatory intent meets the complexity of frontline decision-making.

Through group exercises and facilitated discussion, participants will explore how different regulatory approaches translate into practice. Along the way, they will examine how regulatory context, capability, culture, systems and organisational pressures can strengthen or undermine the connection between what a regulator says it will do and what happens in practice.

The masterclass focuses on making regulatory choices deliberately, understanding their operational consequences, and creating a clear line of sight from posture to practice.

By the end of this masterclass, you will be able to:

• Articulate a regulatory posture clearly enough to shape strategic choices and regulatory practice
• Translate regulatory posture into the operational capabilities, systems, decision-making arrangements and behaviours needed to put it into practice
• Identify where capability, culture and organisational pressures can create misalignment between regulatory intent and practice
• Use a strategic, operational and tactical lens to identify where greater clarity is needed in your own regulatory environment