What is RegData Australia?

RegData Australia extends the logic of the RegData US project to the Australian federal government and state governments. Like RegData US and State RegData, RegData Australia datasets employ the QuantGov platform to download and analyze regulations issued by the Australian federal government and each of the Australian state governments, turning thousands of pages of dense regulatory text into datasets. While RegData US and State RegData are officially two distinct projects which handle US federal and state regulatory codes separately, the RegData Australia project includes data at both the national and state levels of the Australian government (this also applies to RegData Canada). Each dataset contains the following data outputs for each piece of the Australian federal government and state government regulatory codes: general metadata, restriction counts, word counts, complexity metrics, and relevance of content to specific industries. The production of each of the RegData Australia datasets requires unique code development. Interact with RegData Australia and compare metrics between Australian states by using the RegCensus Explorer interactive. The data can be found using our interactive downloader or by using our API.

On this page you will find a selection of resources and information related to RegData Australia including:

1) A selection of videos and visualizations involving RegData Australia
2) Our regcensus explorer interactive, which can be used to quickly examine data related to state regulatory restrictions
3) An explanation of how to use our interactive downloader to retrieve data for Australian states
4) A sample API call of Australian data
5) A table with links to various research projects and academic papers that have made use of RegData Australia

Videos and Visualizations:

Dr Patrick McLaughlin from the Mercatus Centre, in Australia with the IPA, appears on Sky News to talk RegData and how we can solve Australia's red tape crisis

Explore Australian Regulations

Australian Data and the Interactive Downloader

For most users seeking to explore RegData Australia, our interactive downloader is a great way to retrieve the data for different jurisdictions of interest. Below is a brief description on how to use the interactive downloader to retrieve Australian RegData. For a more in-depth tutorial on how to use the interactive downloader, visit this page.

To get data for Canadian jurisdictions, first select Australia in the Country dropdown menu and the jurisdiction of interest in the Jurisdiction menu. Select National for federal level data, All Subnational Jurisdictions for data from every state and territory for which data is available but not the federal government, or select the specific state or territory name if data for only one state or territory is required (eg. New South Wales). Select either Aggregate for summary level data, or Document for individual regulation level data. Many jurisdictions only have one year of data available.

RegData Australia has data for all of our standard series (word count, complexity metrics, restriction counts, restriction counts by industry, etc.) EXCEPT for restriction by agency data, which is unavailable due to the fact that the Australian regulatory system does not involve regulatory agencies. These data types can be selected in the Series menu. RegData Australia is also different from US RegData in that Australia has a parliamentary system of government. As such, there is regulatory text contained both in the original “statutes” and the “regulations” they authorize. Users can select what type of regulatory text they want data for in the Document Type menu.

Research Using RegData Australia:

+	RegData: Australia
BY: Patrick McLaughlin, Oliver Sherouse, Jason Potts DATE: June 27, 2019 Abstract: “In this paper we introduce RegData Australia (RDAU1.0) and present some preliminary and comparative findings using this new panel. RDAU1.0 applies the RegData method to create a unique Australian database that extends from 1997 to 2012. RegData uses text analysis to quantify restrictive clauses in legislation, significantly improving the accuracy of measurements of regulatory incidence. RDAU1.0 extends and adapts the RegData methodology to Australian regulations and legislation. We use RDAU1.0 to capture broad patterns in Australian regulation, and we compare these data to RegData findings from other regulatory jurisdictions, including the federal government in the United States and several US state governments. A preliminary analysis yields relational evidence consistent with previous researchers’ hypothesis that the extent of regulation will be determined by the size of the market because of the fixed costs of regulatory production. This hypothesis suggests that regulatory volume in a specific jurisdiction will scale as a function of the jurisdiction’s population. We examine RegData metrics of regulation for 23 different jurisdictions, including the federal governments of Australia and the United States and the state governments of 21 American states, and find a positive and significant correlation between regulatory volume and population."
+	The Growth of Regulation in Australia
BY: Daniel Wild, Cian Hussey DATE: December, 2019 Excerpt: “This paper provides an initial overview of the size and growth of regulation in Australia at both the federal and state level using the RegData methodology. At the federal level, this paper provides three key findings. Firstly, the total volume of regulation has increased substantially since the data series began in 1977. Specifically, there has been a 421 per cent growth in the number of regulatory restrictions between 1977 and 2019, from 23,558 to 122,798. This is equivalent to approximately ten per cent year annum, compared to Australia’s annual population growth rate of around 1.6 per cent or annual economic growth rate of around 2.5 per cent."
+	The Political Economy of Australian Regulatory Reform
BY: Darcy W. E. Allen, Chris Berg, Aaron M. Lane, Patrick A. McLaughlin DATE: August 28, 2020 Abstract “The problem of regulatory accumulation has increasingly been recognised as a policy problem in its own right. Governments have then devised and implemented regulatory reform policies that directly seek to ameliorate the burdens of regulatory accumulation (e.g. red tape reduction targets). In this paper we examine regulatory reform approaches in Australia through the lens of policy innovation. Our contributions are twofold. We first examine the evolutionary discovery process of regulatory reform policies in Australia (at the federal, intergovernmental and state levels). This demonstrates a process of policy innovation in regulatory mechanisms and measurements. We then analyse a new measurement of regulatory burden based on text analytics, RegData: Australia (see Al-Ubaydli and McLaughlin 2017; McLaughlin et al 2019). RegData: Australia uses textual analysis to count “restrictiveness clauses” in regulation—such as “must”, “cannot” and “shall”—thereby developing a new database (RDAU1.0). We place this “restrictiveness clauses” measurement within the context of regulatory policy innovation, and examine the potential for further innovation in regulatory reform mechanisms."
+	Failure to converge? The Australia-US productivity gap in long-run perspective
BY: Stephen Kirchner DATE: April 16, 2020 Summary: “This report examines the long-run relationship between Australian and US productivity and living standards. Statistical tests of the relationship between US and Australian living standards are consistent with the long-run convergence predicted by economic theory, and provides mixed evidence for a long-run relationship between Australian and US productivity. The report argues that the relative openness of the Australian economy over time is an important determinant of productivity by allowing it to import productivity trends from the global frontier represented by the United States. Measures of the globalisation of the Australian economy predict Australian productivity and help explain the recent weaker trend in ways that competing explanations do not. "

RegData Australia