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by The Modern Regulator
The Modern Regulator Podcast is for regulators and regulatory-adjacent professionals who care about how regulation actually works in practice: stewardship, capability, posture, enforcement, and the decisions that do not always make it into policy documents or academic papers.Hosted by Paul Leavoy and Simon Corden, each episode features a practitioner or thinker with something substantive to say about the craft of regulation. Our focus is on Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other stable democracies where the quality of regulatory practice shapes the quality of public life.The Modern Regulator Podcast is part of The Modern Regulator, a vendor-neutral publication for the regulatory community. Subscribe to the newsletter and find the full archive at themodernregulator.com.
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- 1 weeks ago56 min
Alex McMinn on what makes regulatory reform work
What turns a regulatory review into lasting reform rather than another report on a shelf?Alex McMinn is Head of Regulatory System Capability at New Zealand’s Ministry for Regulation. He joins Paul Leavoy and Simon Corden to examine how reviews can create momentum for change, why regulators need their own measures of performance, and how confidential peer support can help leaders work through difficult institutional problems.McMinn explains the Ministry’s distinctive approach to regulatory reviews, including its efforts to build support for reform before the final report lands. He also discusses the risks involved: speed can preserve momentum, but it can weaken evidentiary depth and allow support to gather around the wrong diagnosis.The conversation then turns to a problem familiar to regulators everywhere. If effective regulation prevents harm that never occurs, how should performance be measured? McMinn argues that inspection numbers, processing times, and stakeholder satisfaction reveal only part of the picture.This episode covers:How reviews can create the conditions for reformWhy reports should mark progress rather than begin the conversationThe trade-off between speed and evidentiary depthHow reviewers can test an early diagnosisWhy generic public service frameworks struggle to assess regulatorsWhat meaningful evidence of regulatory performance might look likeHow confidential peer support can improve regulatory decisionsMcMinn’s magic wand for making prevented harm visibleFurther reading:Artificial Intelligence, Regulatory Capacity, and the Adaptive StateDon’t Build a Profession, Govern a SystemAlex McMinn on New Zealand’s regulatory systemRegulatory Institutions and PracticesSubscribe to The Modern Regulator’s newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow The Modern Regulator on LinkedIn.This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.
- Sep 23, 202653 min
Danielle Wood on resisting the red tape impulse
What happens when the process meant to protect the environment ends up killing off the very species it was designed to save?Danielle Wood is chair of the Productivity Commission, Australia's principal independent policy advisory body on productivity, competition and regulatory reform. She began her career as a graduate and senior research economist with the Commission in 2002, spent nine years at the Grattan Institute, rising to chief executive in 2020, and returned to the PC as chair in November 2023, the first woman to lead the Commission or any of its predecessor agencies in more than a century.In this conversation, Wood walks through the case study behind her essay The Red Tape Impulse, an endangered frog whose habitat restoration was approved too late to save it, and explains why she treats the tabloid test, now the TikTok test, as the real driver of regulatory risk aversion. She also sets out why fixing planning and housing regulation is the one problem she would solve overnight with a magic wand.This episode covers:The green and gold bell frog case study, and what it reveals about regulatory fragmentation and the cost of not knowing which door to walk throughWhy 55 per cent of ASX 200 board time now goes to compliance, up from 25 per cent a decade ago, and what that does to business appetite for riskThe tabloid test versus the TikTok test, and why a charter for regulatory honesty could do for red tape what budget honesty charters did for fiscal policyThe case for cutting back excessive stakeholder consultation, a theme from Wood's speech on regulating for growthWhy more than 75 per cent of land in most Australian capital cities is zoned for only one or two storeys, and what gentle density could unlockWood's approach to AI, treating it as a last resort for new regulation but a genuine tool for regulators themselvesWood's magic wand answer: broad scale upzoning for gentle density across Australia's capital citiesDanielle also shares what's on her reading list right now. Her Substack recommendations:Eating Policy, Jennifer Pahlka's reflections on state capacityDerek Thompson, of Abundance fameZac Gross, for thoughtful takes on Australian macroeconomicsSubscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow TMR on LinkedIn---This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.
- Aug 5, 202627 min
Marcial Boo on building a profession out of regulation
What does it actually take to build a profession out of regulation, from scratch?Marcial Boo has spent three decades in UK public service, running four regulators across entirely different domains – the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Public Health Register during COVID-19, and now the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA). In 2021, he also founded the Institute of Regulation (IoR), built from a handful of volunteers into the UK's professional home for regulators.In this conversation, Boo discusses why so few regulators think of themselves as regulators first, what it takes to move a Member of Parliament (MP) expenses system from paper receipts to algorithmic outlier detection, and why he sees a structural gap between policymaking and implementation as one of the system's biggest sources of friction.This episode covers:Why regulatory identity is still "in the foothills" of becoming a genuine profession, and what the IoR is doing to build itThe IPSA data story: how Boo took MP expenses from stapled paper receipts to a system that could flag suspicious mileage claims across 650 constituenciesWhether a growth duty and regulatory independence can coexist, and why Boo believes stability is itself pro-growthThe structural tension in the IPA's dual role as both a membership body and a regulator, and why Boo expects it to eventually split, as has happened in law and medicineBoo's magic wand answer: the understanding gap between the people who design regulation and the people who implement itSubscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow TMR on LinkedIn---This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.
- Jul 8, 202615 min
Sandra Parker PSM on capability gaps, coaching regulatory leaders, and the question every regulator should ask – Part 2
In part two, the conversation shifts from the reform story to the bigger questions. Sandra Parker PSM, former head of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) and now a coach and facilitator for senior regulatory leaders through the Jeff Whalan Learning Group, talks about what she sees consistently in incoming regulatory leaders: the gaps that trip them up, the knowledge that nobody hands over at appointment, and what she'd fix if she had a magic wand. Sandra also discusses the New Head of Regulator Pocket Guide, a practical resource Sandra helped develop through the Commonwealth Regulator Leadership Cohort. It was designed to give new heads of regulator the grounding the system doesn't otherwise provide. You can download it here.This episode covers: The moment she found (or didn't find) her footing as a new regulator The most common capability gaps in incoming regulatory leaders: legislation, social licence, and the practical skills no handbook covers The case for mandatory induction, mentoring, and coaching at appointment, and why it should be in the minister's letter The Commonwealth Regulator Leadership Cohort and the heads of regulator pocket guide Enforcement philosophy: education vs compliance, and where the balance should sit The magic wand question and Sandra's answer, which isn't a policy reform Who shaped her thinking (hint: she went and sat in on other regulators' enforcement board meetings) If you haven't listened to part one, start there.Subscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow TMR on LinkedIn---This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.
- Jul 8, 202620 min
Sandra Parker PSM on regulatory leadership, isolation, and fixing a 'toothless' regulator – Part 1
What does it actually feel like to move from shaping regulation to enforcing it? Sandra Parker PSM spent eight years as a Commonwealth Deputy Secretary, close to ministers, consulted on everything, and in the room for every major workplace relations decision in Australia. Then in 2018 she stepped across to lead the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), overseeing workplace relations for two million employers and fifteen million workers – and the room went quiet. In part one of this conversation, Sandra discusses the transition that catches so many regulatory leaders off guard: the moment independence arrives and the informal infrastructure disappears. Sandra describes walking into an agency publicly labelled "toothless," with 18 court matters a year, and what she did about it, including a legal interpretation that had been quietly paralysing the agency's enforcement toolkit for years. This episode covers: The isolation shock of moving from policy to regulation and why it's a structural problem, not a personal one The department–regulator relationship: what it should look like, and what it usually does The 7-Eleven wage theft scandal, the Fels task force, and the burning platform Sandra inherited How a capability review and a seconded chief counsel changed the FWO's enforcement postureCompliance notices: from 220 a year to 2,500, and what that shift actually required Part two of this episode is available now. Subscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow TMR on LinkedIn ---This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.
- Jun 16, 202619 min
In Practice: Rob Hortle on the craft of building regulatory capability
Rob Hortle spent more than 25 years in workplace regulation, most recently as the inaugural Commissioner of what is now the Workforce Inspectorate Victoria. In this first episode of In Practice – a sub-series of The Modern Regulator Podcast featuring longer conversations with individual practitioners – Paul Leavoy talks with Rob about what it actually takes to build a regulator's capability from the ground up.In this episode he talks about the design and governance decisions that shaped the inspectorate from day one, why culture doesn't improve in a straight line, how proportionate enforcement works in practice, and why he thinks trustworthiness is a more useful goal than trust.The Modern Regulator (TMR) Podcast is for regulators and regulatory-adjacent professionals in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and other stable democracies who care about the craft of regulation: stewardship, capability, posture, and practice rather than just politics.For more on this conversation, read our previously published feature on Rob and his work on TMR.Subscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow TMR on LinkedIn for new episodes and articles.
- May 5, 2026
Regulation as a craft: Keith Manch on building a profession
Keith Manch has spent nearly five decades regulating almost every major domain of New Zealand public life, from competition law and consumer affairs to gambling, real estate, maritime safety, aviation, and now land transport. In this episode he talks about regulation as a single discipline, the origins of G-REG and the National Regulators Community of Practice, the hard work of building capability across systems, and why he now says that regulation is a political act.The Modern Regulator (TMR) Podcast is for regulators and regulatory-adjacent professionals in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and other stable democracies who care about the craft of regulation: stewardship, capability, posture, and practice rather than just politics.For more on this conversation, read the accompanying feature on TMR.Subscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.Follow TMR on LinkedIn for new episodes and articles.
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About The Modern Regulator Podcast
The Modern Regulator Podcast is for regulators and regulatory-adjacent professionals who care about how regulation actually works in practice: stewardship, capability, posture, enforcement, and the decisions that do not always make it into policy documents or academic papers.Hosted by Paul Leavoy and Simon Corden, each episode features a practitioner or thinker with something substantive to say about the craft of regulation. Our focus is on Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other stable democracies where the quality of regulatory practice shapes the quality of public life.The Modern Regulator Podcast is part of The Modern Regulator, a vendor-neutral publication for the regulatory community. Subscribe to the newsletter and find the full archive at themodernregulator.com.
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