Introduction

Governments are placed with the entire role of formulating laws and regulations that aid in governing its people. They provide a framework that gives directives and describesthe way in which laws are to be followed and possible penalties that one can face if those laws are flouted. Additionally, a regulatory government is best placed in ensuring its citizens livingwithin the accepted limits while preventing occurrences that are detrimental to society. Feintuck and Varney (2008) in their work define regulation as the “sustained and focused control exercised by a public agency over activities that are valued by a community” In Australia for instance, there are regulatory bodies in every sector and they include; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Ombudsman, Australian Taxation Office, Australian Workplace to name a few. It is obvious that regulatory bodies are implemented since people cannot be in a position to govern themselves in the right manner and that there are always organizations and individuals that need to be scrutinized due to their conniving nature. Recently, there havebeenanumber of legislationsintroduced by the Australian government and particularly regarding environment and climate change. This paper therefore evaluates the effects of introduction of such legislation using the free market and pro-regulatory approachesto such legislation giving evidence based on the different stakeholder groups. A conclusion will be supported bythe enactment if such regulation has also been provided. 

Literature Review

The discussion of the introduction of legislation in Australia concerning the prevailing environmental and climate issues has seemedthat much attention has been paidto this arena. As has been indicated by Bennet, Gillspie and Dumsday (2008) in their work “increasing levels of income stimulate demand for environmental improvement”.  This review therefore would focus and discuss first, on aspects touching on the legislation being implemented along the free-market perspective, before it moves to the pro-regulatory approach. These two will be evaluated so as to be able to give a conclusive feedback on the substantial impact of the entire introduction of the legislation since environmental degradation has been put atthe forefront of issues people are confronting in Australia and the government has found it key to start putting across measures of protecting what is left of it.