Documented examples

The move, and what it needed

Australia funds industry-led research centres for three to ten years and shorter CRC Projects for up to three years, giving firms and researchers a shared programme, matching resources and a governance structure for applied work. The long and short formats let a mature collaboration and a focused translation project coexist.

Preconditions

• Universities, research organisations and firms able to define a problem together and commit staff or cash
• A competitive public grant process with independent assessment and enough duration for trust and technical work to accumulate
• A centre-level governance and intellectual-property framework that can turn joint research into adoption or further investment

Where else it has been used: University–industry centres travel when public grants buy durable shared capacity and firms own a consequential problem; short networking schemes without governance, matching effort or a path to adoption produce thinner ties.

The move, and what it needed

The Reserve Bank set real-time payment objectives after its 2012 strategic review and built the Fast Settlement Service, while banks jointly financed, built and governed the switching platform and overlay services, so that every participating account could send and receive in seconds around the clock.

Preconditions

• A central bank willing to set outcome targets and build settlement infrastructure but leave the customer-facing rail to industry.
• A concentrated banking sector able to agree a shared build and its governance.
• Exchange settlement accounts for participants so each payment can settle individually in central bank money.

Where else it has been used: Fast-payment rails built by industry under central bank objectives are common; Australia's case shows the slow part is migrating legacy bulk payments, not launching the rail.

The move, and what it needed

The Commonwealth extended income-contingent loans to vocational diplomas and opened them to private providers with light entry controls; providers and brokers enrolled students at scale, Parliament then legislated the scheme's closure and replaced it with capped loans for approved courses and providers.

Preconditions

• An income-contingent loan system administered through the tax office, so the state could finance study with no upfront fee
• A contestable training market in which private providers drew public money per enrolment
• Regulators (ASQA, ACCC, the department) whose powers and data lagged the growth of enrolments by several years

Where else it has been used: The same demand-driven, provider-paid design produced comparable mis-selling in the United States for-profit college sector and in England's Individual Learning Accounts, which were closed in 2001; each time the fix was to cap the loans and vet the providers, which shrinks reach along with fraud.

The move, and what it needed

Parliament and Treasury put a licensing exemption into regulation, so an eligible firm can notify ASIC and start testing within set client and exposure limits, rather than applying for case-by-case relief.

Preconditions

• A statutory power to exempt from the licensing regime by regulation
• Hard caps on clients and exposure so a notification regime stays safe without vetting
• A public register so customers can check that a firm is a sandbox user

Where else it has been used: Australia moved from a regulator-run sandbox to a legislated notification exemption; low take-up suggests automatic entry does not by itself create demand.

The move, and what it needed

Treasury designed a flat-rate wage subsidy and the Australian Taxation Office paid it through the single-touch payroll and business registration systems it already ran, so Parliament could legislate eligibility and money reached employers within about five weeks.

Preconditions

• A tax office already holding near-real-time payroll and turnover data for most employers
• A Parliament able to pass emergency legislation within days with bipartisan support
• Fiscal room to accept large deadweight in exchange for speed

Where else it has been used: Germany's Kurzarbeit, the UK furlough scheme and New Zealand's wage subsidy did the same job in the same months; the schemes that already existed in law, like Kurzarbeit, paid sooner, and the new ones depended on how much payroll data the tax authority already held.

The move, and what it needed

The Commonwealth pre-commits by ministerial determination to reimburse a set share of state and territory relief and recovery spending in defined categories once an event is activated, so states can spend first and claim afterwards under an agreed assurance process.

Preconditions

• A federal fiscal capacity large enough to absorb a bad disaster year
• State governments able to design, run and acquit relief programmes
• An assurance process both levels of government accept, which the audit found still lacked performance monitoring

Where else it has been used: Canada's DFAA is the older version of the same cost-sharing move. Both reached modernisation reviews that pushed toward funding mitigation, because a reimbursement scheme alone pays to rebuild what the next event can destroy again.

The move, and what it needed

The Commonwealth committed to a 1,700 km freight line through a government-owned track company and started construction before the route ends, approvals and designs were settled; when successive reviews put the cost far above the budget, it moved delivery into a dedicated subsidiary, commissioned independent cost assurance and then cut the line back to the sections already under way.

Preconditions

• A government-owned rail company able to take Commonwealth equity and build without a separate procurement for each section
• Construction started on sections whose environmental approvals and designs were immature
• A budget process willing to recognise a reversal and return equity rather than keep funding the full scope

Where else it has been used: The pattern matches gbr-hs2 in this corpus: a national line cut back to its first sections after its cost estimate tripled, with the corridor preserved for later.

The move, and what it needed

Parliament made voting a legal duty with a token fine, paired it with automatic-style enrolment, Saturday voting and easy postal and early options, so the state removed every excuse at the same time as it imposed the duty.

Preconditions

• Cross-party agreement to keep the duty, since either side could repeal it
• An electoral commission trusted to run painless voting
• A fine large enough to state the norm and small enough not to embitter

Where else it has been used: Around twenty countries mandate voting and fewer enforce it; Belgium and Luxembourg are the closest working siblings. Where compulsion was dropped, as in Chile in 2012, turnout fell by tens of points within two elections.