Consultation

The NSW Government is committed to consulting on all regulatory proposals to ensure they are responsive to the knowledge, experience and opinions of stakeholders. A consultation policy for regulatory proposals has been developed and can be found in Section 3 of the Guide to Better Regulation.

Effective consultation processes will commonly be:

Proportional: the resources spent on consultation should be commensurate with the scale of the problem.

Timely: consultation should occur early and stakeholders given sufficient time to submit their views. The minimum period is 28 days but this does not prevent longer consultation periods being employed for more significant or complex proposals. Consultation may also be necessary at a number of different points during a regulatory development process.

Accessible and representative: consultation should involve all relevant stakeholders.

Focused: the objectives of the consultation and the particular issues on which views are sought should be clearly stated. As far as possible, all feasible options should also be considered.

Transparent: stakeholders should be given sufficient information to enable them to understand the policy problem and proposed response. Submissions received as part of a consultation process should normally be made publicly available.

Flexible: the consultation method should be chosen on a case by case basis.