WA Energy Minister Reece Whitby raised some eyebrows back in February when he said he suspected “there’s a nerdy little bureaucrat in an agency in Canberra somewhere who’s trying to cover his butt”.

The issue at hand was Woodside’s North West Shelf expansion, which after going through a six-year approvals process with the WA regulator (in addition to being subject to numerous, lengthy legal challenges) was subject to a further game of federal political football.

The Woodside experience of delay, disruption, duplicative and cumbersome approvals processes does not help Western Australia, or Australia, attract the investment dollars which companies will otherwise put to use developing resources and creating jobs elsewhere in the world.

But it’s not just about Woodside and other large companies who are, relatively speaking, more able to deal with this kind of costly (and sometimes vexatious) dithering and delay.

As the WA Liberal spokesperson for deregulation and public sector reform, I’ve heard firsthand how excessive legislation and red tape is stifling free enterprise and entrepreneurship.

From farmers in the Wheatbelt to retail shopkeepers in Perth, West Australians who want to run a business and build a future for their family and their community are frustrated.

They are frustrated by the very same kind of “butt-covering bureaucracies” that Whitby described.

They are frustrated not only by the constantly expanding rules and costs placed on them by government, but by the time it takes to obtain permission to do anything.

And by the fact that they are part of the ever-shrinking tax base asked to pay the salaries of those who dream up new rules and fail to deliver a reasonable level of service to those asked to comply with them.

It’s just that their plight is not often heard. They are simply too busy trying to run their business – in addition to looking after their families – to spend time politicking. They don’t have an army of PR professionals and compliance officers like big businesses do.

The point of government is not bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake, but that is often and unfortunately, what it has become.

Instead, it should be focused on creating an environment where innovation and ambition can thrive, with clearly stated and fair rules of the game. It should be focused on delivering a high quality of service in areas such as in healthcare and policing, and in the proper management of our natural environment.

Public sector resources should be redirected to where they matter most: frontline services. Western Australians don’t need a growing cadre of well-paid public sector senior executives. What they would like instead is more nurses, teachers, and police officers.

As far as the public sector does regulate, it should embed real-world customer service standards, accountability, and measurable performance expectations.

It’s time for a public sector that listens, responds, and delivers in a timely manner, rather than suppresses and frustrates the ambitions of West Australians.

Public sector executives and agency chief executives must also face greater scrutiny. Accountability and performance management should be tightened to ensure leadership delivers value for taxpayers.

This would include collecting and reporting customer service scores from taxpayers in agency annual reports. External advisors could be used to monitor CEO performance.

Additionally, hiring from the private sector, real-world termination pathways, reduced tenure, and imposed KPIs would be helpful.

This could reforming, or reducing reliance on, WA public service selection criteria where it may otherwise limit experienced private sector workers from filling senior executive ranks, and reviewing the current maximum five-year tenure for senior executives.

Clear, measurable KPIs should be established across the public service that include, for example, criteria such as cost management, staff retention, and timeliness of task completion.

The Liberal Party believes in a Western Australia where businesses are free to innovate, where public servants are empowered to serve, and where every citizen feels that government that works for them.

We want to build a state that leads the nation in opportunity, efficiency, and ambition, ready to meet the challenges and seize the possibilities of the future. Western Australians are more than capable of that, if they are allowed to do so.