If 'business as usual' is so utterly broken, why do we keep doing it?

Rather than pile on more regulation, why not look to reduce the compliance burden? The answer there seems to be a reluctance to ‘wind back the clock’ to a time of less onerous compliance. Utility companies, operating as quasi monopolies, pursue increasingly high standards of engineering compliance to guard against one in a hundred-year events, or even to safeguard against climate scenarios for a largely unpredictable future. Some adopt ‘zero complaint’ benchmarks as their performance KPIs, which leads to over-design (“gold plating”). Local governments can adopt increasingly high-performance standards which are referenced to third party professional bodies (such as the engineers) to shift responsibility. Those professional bodies, not wanting to support moderate standards where there is an element of risk, respond with highest standards as minimums, to mitigate risk. All this comes at a cost.  

Alternatives – such as large scale off-grid utilities around water and wastewater – are resisted because they don’t fit the BAU model – even if they could substantially reduce costs and timeframes (which itself could also expose the inefficiency of the BAU model, so another reason to say no). And we are still rolling out NBN cable to new estates, even though an uplink to a satellite is both wireless, cheaper and faster.

Alternatives to the financing and operation of infrastructure for housing are also generally resisted. The upfront per-lot infrastructure charge approach has become entrenched as the BAU model, despite adding to the upfront costs faced by young buyers. To date there has been minimal interest in exploring alternatives such as Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) which in the USA are widely used to fund and operate essential development infrastructure, off the balance sheets of government. They work by raising a bond to fund the delivery and operation of local water, wastewater and other utilities (even including social infrastructure such as schools or health care sometimes) which is paid off by the residents over time. It’s in effect a line on their rates bill, paid off after 10 or 15 years (maybe longer), rather than an upfront hit of an additional $30,000 or $50,000 in headworks PLUS the inefficiencies built into the $180,000 worth of civils per lot. Imagine the idea of allowing a developer to bring market efficiency to the planning and delivery of utilities infrastructure, saving costs and time for homebuyers, rather than some bloated semi government monopoly!

Even where things like prefab housing (modern methods of construction) are a proven delivery model around the world, we are resisting their deployment here - with the exception of mining camps or emergency shelters. Our mandated standards (for electricity, plumbing, energy efficiency, disability access, water efficiency and more) can prove difficult for foreign manufactured providers to meet. Even when they are designed overseas to Australian standards, we find local compliance or inspection agencies disputing that the standards have been met because our habit of wanting to ‘tick off’ compliance at every stage of the build is unrealistic (and defeats the point of efficient manufactured housing). Once it’s built, you can’t pull it apart so a plumbing inspector can say he’s happy with the internal connections.

So it seems we keep applying business as usual approaches to the same problems that business as usual has created in the first place. There is no logical explanation for this. “We’ve always done it this way” is the usual response, and it’s not good enough.

I’m reminded of that scene in Fawlty Towers, where Basil – who insists on driving a highly unreliable mini as his mode of transport – finally loses it one wet English day when it chooses the worst possible time to break down. Says Basil: “Well, don't say I haven’t warned you. I've laid it on the line to you time and time again. I'm going to give you a damn good trashing.”

Which he does. Only to appear in subsequent episodes, still driving the same car.