Independent ratings of Australian regulators
Do the regulators do their job?
Australia's regulators are given real powers to protect the public. This site checks whether they use them. Each one gets a grade from A to F, worked out from its own annual reports, the law it runs under and its published decisions.
The regulators
| Regulator | Jurisdiction | Grade | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal Services Commission (Qld) | Queensland | C | The Commission investigates, starts its own cases and wins them in the tribunal, but investigations take about two years, it has eased the targets it keeps missing, its audit program has barely run and it now publishes less about what complainants wait for and receive. Much of the delay after filing belongs to QCAT and to a scheme that sends every disciplinary matter there, and the Commission has said so plainly. The grade reflects what it controls. |
| Commonwealth Ombudsman | Commonwealth | D | Strong systemic work, weighed against five years of missed service targets and too little published evidence about what happens to the 98 per cent of complaints that are not formally investigated. |
| NSW Ombudsman | NSW | D | Good systemic work and a real recovery in investigatory effort, weighed against a complaint service that sets no targets, satisfies one complainant in three, and does not publish what people get from it. |
| Ahpra and the National Boards | National (scheme) | D | Registration works, but dealing with concerns about practitioners has been found too slow by Parliament, independent reviewers and Ministers for at least nine years, and the measures that would show improvement are the ones Ahpra has stopped publishing. |
| Australian National Audit Office | Commonwealth | C | Does its compulsory job completely and well, but its discretionary audit program is at a 25-year low and below what Parliament asked for, what the public sends it is not counted, and its reporting about itself went backwards this year. |
| Cyber Security NSW | NSW | D | Does the visible parts of its job and has tightened the rules since 2024, but on the public record it cannot show whether NSW Government systems are secure. |
| Law Enforcement Conduct Commission | NSW | D | Hemmed in by its Act, but its own investigations have shrunk as its resources grew, it sets no standard for complainants, and its reports leave out things the Act requires. |
| Office of the Gene Technology Regulator | Commonwealth | B | The Regulator does its core licensing job on time every year and reports its findings openly, but its checking covers a small part of the field, its formal enforcement powers have not been seen in use, and its performance measures were loosened in 2024-25 without explanation. The office is about to move to partial cost recovery, with its first increase in base funding since 2002, $6.8 million over four years, starting in July 2026. Reform of the Act, recommended by a review whose 27 recommendations ministers endorsed after 2017, is still at the draft bill stage. Those are matters for governments, not the Regulator. |
| Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services (WA) | Western Australia | B | The Inspector inspects every facility, reports plainly and uses its strongest power when the evidence calls for it, but it has let the statutory three-year cycle slip without saying so and has been slow to get its own reports to Parliament. The worst failures in WA custody over this period, overcrowding, lockdowns and the deaths of two young people in detention, belong to the Department of Justice and the government. The Inspector reported them. What would lower the grade is another missed cycle or a return to year-long reports. What would raise it is a public table of every facility's last and next inspection, and a count of what its recommendations actually changed. |
How the grades work
For each body we start with what it is for, from its legislation and its own website. Then we go through its annual reports and media releases to see what it actually did. The grade reflects the gap between the two.
Every regulator gets a short article with the main finding, the full report with the figures and a source for each, and blog posts on anything else worth knowing. More about the site
Latest from the blog
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Qld Legal Services Commission Moving the goalposts, twice
Queensland's Legal Profession Act requires the Legal Services Commissioner to set performance criteria for handling complaints and to report against them each year (s 489). Until 2021-22 the criteria for investigations were 75% finished within six months and all within 18 months. In 2021-22 the…
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Qld Legal Services Commission 71.3% within one day, 28.7% within two
The 2020-21 annual report's performance table says the Commission answered 71.3% of enquiries within one working day and 28.7% within two working days. The second target is cumulative: everything answered within one day was also answered within two. The two-day figure cannot be lower than the…
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Qld Legal Services Commission The appendix that went missing
In 2019-20 and 2020-21 the Commission's annual report ended with about 30 pages of statistics. They included the median number of days complaints and summary dismissals were open (203 and 49 days in 2020-21), a table headed "Complaints About Us, Grievances and RTI Applications", investigations…
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Qld Legal Services Commission Audits on hold
The Commissioner can audit any incorporated legal practice, whether or not anyone has complained (Legal Profession Act 2007 s 130). There were 1,964 of them at 30 June 2025, two thirds of Queensland's solicitor practices.
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Qld Legal Services Commission No media release is about a practising lawyer
On 26 October 2026 the Commission's news page carried ten media releases, from March 2023 to September 2026. One launched the sexual harassment reporting tool. The other nine are about unlawful operators: people practising law without being entitled to, including an Airtasker operator who was…
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Qld Legal Services Commission Thirty reviews, thirty decisions confirmed
The Legal Profession Act gives a complainant no right to have the Commissioner's decision reviewed. The Commission reviews decisions anyway, saying it is "good decision-making practice and in the public interest".