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Workshop Series on Responsive Regulation at the Department of Disabilities, Housing and Community Services (DHCS)




Workshop 1 : Best practice though responsive regulation: examples from health regulation - John Braithwaite (8 March 2007)

This workshop will introduce principles that are central to responsive regulation by exploring their application to health regulation, as well as their more specific use in cases of family violence, through the use of family group conferencing. Central to the idea of responsive regulation, which was developed by Ayres and Braithwaite (1992), are “pyramids” – blue-print diagrams that organizations develop to set out options available to them for escalating sanctions in response to the behaviour of those being regulated. John will introduce participants to his recent thinking on the importance of regulation that enables rather than disables those who are being regulated. In other words, pyramids can escalate positive rewards as well as negative sanctions. He will introduce different pyramid models that aim to build on strengths and develop capacity that benefit those being regulated as well as those doing the regulating.

Reading:

Braithwaite, J. (2002). Restorative justice and responsive regulation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Braithwaite, J. (2004). Emancipation and hope. The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, 592, 79-99.pdf version

Braithwaite, J., Makkai, T., & Braithwaite, V. (in press). Regulating aged care: Ritualism and the new pyramid. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Ayres, I., & Braithwaite, J. (1992). Responsive regulation: transcending the deregulation debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.





Workshop 2: Ten things you need to know about regulation - lessons learned from the Australian Tax Office - Val Braithwaite (22 March 2007)

For most people, “to regulate” means to control or direct others by rules, standards or principles. Regulation need not be this way. When regulation is understood as a social activity that includes persuasion, influence, voluntary compliance and self-regulation, the term “to regulate” takes on a whole new dimension. Regulation becomes something that we all engage in when we intervene purposefully in our social world. This paper brings together a set of regulatory principles that apply in formal as well as informal regulatory contexts. The principles are extracted from research undertaken by the Centre for Tax System Integrity at the ANU on taxation compliance, but at the same time, draw upon the contributions to regulatory scholarship that have been made by other researchers in other contexts over the past three decades.

Reading:

Braithwaite, Valerie (2006) Ten Things You Needed To Know About Regulation and Never Wanted to Ask, Australian Law Librarian Journal 14 (3) 19-28. pdf version

Braithwaite, Valerie and Braithwaite, John (2001) Managing taxation compliance: the  evolution of the Australian Taxation Office compliance model. In M. Walpole and C.  Evans (eds), Tax Administration in the 21st Century. Prospect Media, St. Leonards.

Braithwaite, Valerie, Murphy, Kristina and Reinhart, Monika (2007) Taxation Threat, Motivational Postures and Responsive Regulation, Special issue Law and Policy 29 (1) 137-158. pdf version


Workshop handout



Workshop 3: Networks and collaborating to provide security: examples from policing - Jen Wood (5 April 2007)

An important part of modern day policing is recognizing that this activity is not just a state responsibility. Other security strategies and initiatives are a necessary and important part of ensuring security for the community. This includes the activities of government agencies, not-for-profit organizations and the business sector. The coordination of all these groups and their working relationships are critical to ensuring that the community is “safe”. Jen Wood and Clifford Shearing and their team have been working with the Victorian Police to find out how to optimize the use of resources available in the community for the provision of human security.

Reading:
Wood, Jennifer and Shearing, Clifford (2006) Imagining Security. Willan Publishing, Devon.
 

Workshop handout

Workshop 4: Implementation challenges with regulating responsively - Jenny Job (19 April 2007)

The Australian Taxation Office developed and introduced a Compliance Model in the late 90s to help them understand and manage the systemic causes of taxation non-compliance. The background to this process was recognition that people failed to comply for many different reasons, sometimes for reasons beyond their direct control. The model was developed with the intent of helping staff appreciate and be on the look out for a range of reasons for non-compliance, and thereby develop better non- compliance management systems. The ATO was encountering recurrent non-compliance incidents that were expensive both for the ATO and the taxpayers concerned. The model was developed through one of the ATO’s community consultative committees, the Cash Economy Task Force. The Commissioner then asked for the model to be rolled-out in the organization. This workshop by Jenny Job recounts the issues that faced and challenged ATO staff and the Model in the first years of “roll-out”. Jenny will also draw on her experience in New Zealand, Timor L’Este and Indonesia where she has taught compliance model principles and worked with other tax agencies that have built their own regulatory pyramids to deal with their particular non-compliance challenges.

Reading:

Job, J. (2006) Building social and political trust: The role of civic engagement, The International Scope Review 13 1-23. (pdf version)

Job, J. (2005) How is trust in government created? It begins at home, but ends in the  Parliament, Australian Review of Public Affairs 6(1) 1-23. (pdf version)  

Job, J., Stout, A. and Smith, R. (2007) Culture change in three taxation  administrations: From command-and-control to responsive regulation, Special issue  Law and Policy, 29 (1) 84-101. (pdf version)

Job, J. and Honaker, D. (2003) Short-term experience with responsive regulation in the Australian Taxation Office. In V. Braithwaite (ed), Taxing Democracy: Understanding Tax Avoidance and Evasion. Ashgate, Aldershot. (pp. 111-130)      (pdf version)


Workshop handout


Workshop 5: Hoping for cooperation, satisfied with resistance: Motivational postures in contested situations - Val Braithwaite (3 May 2007)

Motivational postures describe the ways in which we deal with authority in order to protect ourselves from the threat we feel when an authority tries to make us change the way we do things. Motivational postures are stories we tell ourselves and others about the authority and convey a message about how much we like the authority and how much we recognize the right or legitimacy of the authority to tell us what to do. Five motivational postures have been identified and they seem to hold up across different regulatory domains – and different authorities. Two “adversarial” postures are particularly interesting in what they tell us about defiance of authority. They have been called resistance and dismissiveness. Resistance tends to be noisy and argumentative, but at the heart of resistance is a desire to be respected and approved of by authority. Dismissiveness is clever and sometimes invisible to an authority until it is too late. It involves game playing, finding ways around rules, challenging authority with the intent of winning. Understanding these differences and knowing how to flip a community from dismissive to resistant defiance, and hopefully ultimately to cooperation is a challenge that all modern day regulators face.


Reading:

Braithwaite, V. Dancing with tax authorities: Motivational postures and non-compliant actions. In V. Braithwaite (ed) Taxing Democracy: Understanding Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003: 15-40. (pdf version)

Braithwaite, V., Braithwaite, J., Gibson, D. & Makkai, T.Regulatory styles, motivational postures and nursing home compliance, Law and Policy 16 1994:363-394. (pdf version)

Braithwaite, V. Games of engagement: Postures within the regulatory community, Law and Policy 17 1995:225-255. (pdf version)




Workshop 6: Decision making in responsive frameworks: Examining the use of family group conferencing in Australia and New Zealand - Nathan Harris (17 May 2007)

Family group conferences are decision-making forums that were first introduced in New Zealand as a means for empowering families to have a greater say when formal action was taken in child protection and juvenile justice issues. Since then conferences have been imported into most Australian states. They have significance for responsive regulation because they are seen as one way of blending protection action with a focus on supporting and empowering families. The way in which conferences can be used to provide this kind of option will be examined by exploring the role that conferences play in child protection systems in Australia and New Zealand.  

Reading:

Harris, N. (Draft) Family Group Conferencing in Australia 14 years on. Issues, 27, 1-19. (pdf version)

Harris, N. (2001) Ethical identity, shame management and criminal justice. In Ahmed, E. Harris, N., Braithwaite, J., & Braithwaite, V. Shame management through reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pdf version)

Harris, N. and Maruna, S. (2006) Shame, Shaming and Restorative justice: A critical appraisal. In Sullivan, D. &Tiff, L. (2006). Handbook of Restorative Justice. Routledge: New York (pdf version)


 

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Page last updated 2 January 2007
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