The NRA proposed a new way of working with the Commonwealth that included four key elements: collaboration; an outcomes-based approach; jurisdictional flexibility; and a long-term and integrated reform agenda across portfolio areas. The Victorian Government has argued that collaboration is about agreeing to implement policies in more integrated ways, including collaboration on interface issues. An outcomes-based approach is about focusing policies on achieving outcomes for the community, not prescribing actions. Jurisdictional flexibility relies on moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to reform that allows jurisdictions to pursue outcomes in ways that reflect different systems, circumstances and priorities. Finally, the Victorian Government has argued that the NRA is about a long-term and integrated reform agenda across portfolio areas where COAG would focus on the outcomes that matter to the economy and community and collectively undertake long-term integrated reform across portfolio areas.

We are not starting on a green field site. Australia has successfully implemented collaborative national reform previously. The NCP is widely acknowledged as one of the most successful collaborative reform efforts since Federation. The Productivity Commission’s review of National Competition Policy reforms identified four key success factors that made NCP so successful (Productivity Commission 2005). These were: recognition by all governments of the need for reform; broad agreement on the priority problem areas; a solid conceptual framework and information base to guide policy prescriptions; and some highly effective procedural and institutional mechanisms to implement reform.

The NCP procedural and institutional mechanisms were important and included transparent and independent monitoring of progress and outcomes, robust accountability arrangements and financial incentives to states and territories. Gary Banks, the chair of the Productivity Commission has proposed that the framework to drive successful reform into the twenty-first century should contain ‘independent monitoring and assessment of progress in implementing agreed reforms’, ‘robust accountability arrangements (including) progress measures’; and ‘financial incentives to the states and territories to enable an appropriate sharing of the costs and benefits of reform’ (Banks 2006).

These are all elements which the Victorian Government has advocated as critical to the success of the NRA. The evidence suggests that without the appropriate incentives and a robust framework, governments will not be able to deliver the ambitious reform agenda required to meet the challenges ahead.