Counting the Casualties of Telecom: The Adoption of Part 6 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth)

Abstract

The concept of self-regulation in all of its forms has become a foundation stone in the theoretical and practical debates about the role and function of the modern 'decentred' regulatory state. In the decentred state, government, among other things, ceases to rely upon the old tool of 'command and control' regulation to achieve social policy goals. Instead, government relies on alternative systems developed by industry and others and faces the arguably more daunting challenge of trying to harness the internal regulatory capacity of these other regulatory systems, directing and steering them in a way that ensures they deliver the goods and services sought by society in accordance with accepted social values. Although the focus of the theoretical regulatory debate has started to shift to the meta-regulatory potential of law and the ability of government to 'regulate self-regulation', the question of how and why self-regulatory rule-making regimes actually emerge remains largely unexplored from an empirical standpoint. A better understanding of why self-regulatory rule-making regimes develop and the roles of law and government (if any) in the emergence of those systems is necessary, however, if meta-regulating law is to have any hope of becoming more effective than the blunt instrument of the old-styled regulation of the centred state.