Gary Hardgrave:
New research out today. The Institute of Public Affairs shows that by next year, more than 110,000 federal public servants will be employed just to create and enforce red tape, a 21% jump in just four years. It’s a staggering $16 billion annually direct costs. Down on costs? Havens, I don’t know. The bloke whi has done the research is joining The Ministry of Common Sense right now, Saxon Davidson, he’s a research fellow at the IPA. Saxon, thanks for your time today. This research is frightening, pretty grim picture being painted.
Saxon Davidson:
Oh, good morning. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it’s very grim. 110,000 people just to enforce red tape within the federal government, and this doesn’t account for all the equivalent bureaucrats at the state level either. It’s just ridiculous. And as you said earlier, 16 billion annual costs by the end of this financial year just to pay for these bureaucrats. It’s no wonder why there are so many jobs in the productive sector, the private sector that remain unfilled when you have all these well-paid people whose sole responsibility is to crush the productivity of that private sector. And that’s why we’re in the rut economically that we’re in today.
Gary Hardgrave:
Where do you see the end game for this? What are they doing? Trying to kill Australia off completely?
Saxon Davidson:
Well, in terms of end game, you can really see this in where the largest growth is in this red tape army growth, and that’s in the climate change portfolio to no one’s surprise, clearly. It has more than doubled in the last four years, the amount of red tape bureaucrats in the climate change, energy environment, and water portfolio alone. And the staffing cost for these red tape enforces in this portfolio is soon to reach over $1 billion by the end of this financial year.
And there’s obviously an ideological agenda. Clearly they’re still obsessed with the renewable transition with net zero and with destroying our base load sources of energy. And in other sectors, it’s clearly also ideological because the government has been increasing red tape on red tape ever since they got into government in May 2022. This red tape is costing the economy $176 billion in lost output every year and is only growing.
Gary Hardgrave:
So Saxon, we spoke to the mayor of the City of Moreton Bay. I don’t expect you to be across all of that detail, but in the suburb of Petrie, there’s a park called Wyllie Park. He wants to put 60 people in tents there because they can’t build houses. You got the Canadian prime minister saying, “I want to not only cut immigration, I want to build houses using Canadian tradespeople, Canadian timber to get more houses at a cheaper price.” I mean, that’s leadership. We’re not getting this in Australia, yet we’ve got all these people hired now to admire problems.
Saxon Davidson:
Yeah, you’re exactly right. This problem is twofold. There’s a lot of red tape in building homes where you have environmental standards, you also have cultural heritage issues. And then you also have just basic union overpowerment on the ability to build homes. Where I’m from in Victoria, there’s a large destruction of workers from the construction sector to work in big build projects instead of building homes. But then the other problem as well is that there’s a massive worker shortage problem Australia-wide, economy-wide, but particularly in the construction sector and in the manufacturing sector. It’s become far too difficult without significant reform to actually just build things here in Australia. And we need significant reform. We need to massively cut red tape, and we need to start investing in the industries that actually do create things here in Australia, particularly our construction and manufacturing sector.
Gary Hardgrave:
You talked about the Department of Climate Change, energy, environment, water. I would get rid of that department tomorrow. We’re paying the head of that department a million dollars a year. No doubt a handful of deputies would probably be paid $750,000 a year. I don’t know. But the fact is everything we’re doing impacts on that. If you want to go and buy, I don’t know, a bit of glazing for your house, you’ve actually got to fill in a form to actually prove that it’s meeting climate change requirements on its refraction, its reflection, how much heat is left and able to eke out. I mean, everywhere you turn, there is these make work forms that are being created to justify these departments. It’s killing industry. It’s killing private sector investment. It’s killing the ambitions of everyday Australians and making them homeless.
Saxon Davidson:
Well, you’re exactly right. It’s killing the ambitions of the private industry. And then also on top of that, and in the end of the day, that all trickles down to killing the ambitions of everyday Australians. I would also get rid of that department, but there’s a lot of legislative work that has to be done to get rid of all the Byzantine laws that that department also covers.
Gary Hardgrave:
Okay. I’m going to give you a big pair of scissors right now. And I’m going to say, rightyo, Saxon, start cutting. Where will you cut first? Do you nip, you tuck? Do you take all of the legislation say, I’m going to rip it in half, get rid of half, I don’t care which half? What are you going to do?
Saxon Davidson:
So I’d get rid of the Climate Change Act 2022, which embeds the net zero target and all the renewable energy targets into our laws and actually embeds the Paris Climate Agreement into our legislative framework. But scrap the safeguard mechanism, which is the government’s way of… It’s a carbon tax essentially in our large emission emitting industries.
And also get rid of the renewable and net zero stuff out of the Future Made in Australia policy. There can be no Future Made in Australia while we have a net zero target and while we’re undergoing the renewable transition. Having a government programme that supports manufacturing in critical industries is, in a vacuum, not a bad idea from the government, but it cannot exist while we have this net zero transition, nor can it exist to use the Future Made in Australia policy to achieve net zero. Because in the end of the day, emissions is just human activity and it’s just human activity. It’s human creation. And you can’t create, you can’t manufacture if you’re getting rid of all of your emissions. So those are the three big items that I would do.
Gary Hardgrave:
Yeah, fair enough. I mean, Saxon, I want to stand up for the agricultural industries of Australia. There are all these laws that are all coming out of this Department of Climate Change that say, “We can come in, we can do whatever we like. We can widen that road, cut that path, chop down that hill. We’ll put up tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of concrete into the ground so we can put up some wind turbine. We’ll turn agricultural land into silicon vistas, solar panel vistas. And if you’re a next door neighbour, you’ve got no say.” This is splitting rural communities, this sort of stuff. And that’s the real damage that’s coming out of this pursuit of net zero.
Saxon Davidson:
Absolutely. And another part is that often when entire communities don’t want these wind factories, these solar factories, all these huge transmission lines that cut through their land, it turns into a huge violation of their property rights. And you’re right, it does split communities apart by people who do sign the contract and have them there, but then their next door neighbour hates the site.
But also these huge solar factories destroyed long-term jobs. You can’t use that land for agricultural output. And also there’s no long-term jobs for people on solar factories. Maybe in the construction phase, I’ll admit that as anyone would, that clearly you’re going to have people work on there. But otherwise, the only ongoing work is polishing the panels, which would be done at a very low cost at almost a minimum wage and it would just be casual work.
So absolutely it undercuts our agricultural output. And nonetheless as well, we’re talking about emissions reduction. Our agricultural sector is also a high emitting industry. So obviously those jobs are going to be put at risk and on the line with this net zero transition.
Gary Hardgrave:
So give me that number again. It’s 16 billion for the 110,000 people who are going to be in there fashioning and admiring the red tape, but the overall cost of these climate initiatives, it’s far greater, isn’t it?
Saxon Davidson:
Yes. So my colleague, Adam Creighton, I believe put the annual net zero cost in the budget to, I believe it’s $9 billion. I don’t have that number in front of me, but I believe that’s the cost. So my colleague, Adam Creighton, put that cost to $9 billion.
Gary Hardgrave:
It’s a huge cost at a time when we don’t have money. We’ve got to borrow from overseas to buy things from overseas to destroy our country. That’s how I’m reading it, and that’s why we’ll keep talking about it. Saxon, thanks for being part of The Ministry of Common Sense. Saxon Davidson from the Institute of Public Affairs.
This transcript with Saxon Davidson talking on Mornings – 4BC from 13 August 2026 has been edited for clarity.
