Financial regulators are challenged to respond to the innovation opportunities presented by financial technology (fintech). Current rules are not necessarily sufficient or effective to adequately regulate new business models and new products relating to innovations such as crypto assets or digital financial services. Regulators that fail to respond in a timely manner may drive innovation offshore and deprive their markets and consumers of appropriate, new services. To respond to new financial innovation, regulators have been establishing innovation hubs and regulatory sandboxes. Innovation hubs enable them to engage innovators more effectively. Sandboxes allow the products to be tested in a controlled environment and enable to regulator to consider whether existing laws are appropriate to regulate such products and, of not, what measures may be required. Sandboxes are however resource intensive and they hold a number of risks. Financial regulators are, of course, not alone in having to address the regulatory challenges of innovation. This article therefore also considers other non-financial regulatory experiences of innovative products and services, namely automated vehicles; emissions trading in China; and Uber and its clones, to consider whether those experiences hold lessons for financial regulators.

The Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has highlighted the chronic shortages of labour to provide care for those aged 65 and over in rural and remote areas of Australia. This descriptive cross-sectional study compares the availability of care provision in metropolitan regions with that in rural and remote regions. We analysed the 2021 Australian Census, grouped according to Aged-Care-Planning Region (ACPR), and investigated the numbers of people aged 65 years and over with different levels of care need, both in residential care and in-home. The available workforce in each ACPR was also examined in detail, using occupational classifications reported in the Census, and shortages of doctors, nurses, allied health and other care workers were identified. Overall, an additional 492,416 care hours were needed per week (or 12,958 full-time equivalent (FTE) care workers) in order to bring remote community ACPRs to parity with provision in metropolitan ACPRs. A further 95,342 FTE workers were needed in rural ACPRs to bring these areas to parity with metropolitan ACPRs. Our findings underscore the ongoing disparities in aged care workforce availability between metropolitan, rural, and remote regions of Australia. Addressing these workforce shortages is crucial to ensuring equitable access to care for older Australians, regardless of their geographical location. The implementation of targeted strategies to enhance workforce recruitment, retention, and training in these underserved areas is essential to bridge the gap and improve the quality of care provided to older adults in rural and remote communities. Such strategies could include targeted recruitment campaigns and incentives for professionals to relocate; further capacity for clinical placements and supervision in rural areas; tailoring funding and employment models for rural needs; and strengthening vocational education in regional areas.

This chapter looks at the evolution of regulation over time and how reliance on trust and relationships has changed. It also examines the nature of the failures which occurred. In some cases these were errors of omission. In other cases the problems were intrinsic to the regulatory process, although they were worsened by changes to industry structure and incentives. Yet other problems were created or seriously exacerbated by regulation itself. Misplaced faith in the efficient market hypothesis and the risk models developed on the back of this theory allowed systemic pressure to go unchecked. Governance arrangements in the financial industry were also found wanting during the GFC. The chapter finishes by identifying the lessons that have been learned and examining the issues that remain—issues which require an explicit focus on encouraging trustworthiness and the use of mechanisms which reinforce appropriate values and norms.

Australia’s aged care system provides a variety of residential, respite and in-home services to support older people. Services are subsidised by government, supplemented by (means-tested) client contributions. The system is designed to be flexible, allowing people to enter at any level, provided they are assessed as eligible. However, a recent Royal Commission highlighted numerous shortcomings of the system, including abuse and neglect ( Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety [Royal Commission], 2021 ). Recent government focus on community-based services reflects budgetary concerns, citing older Australians’ preference to stay in their homes. A further problem for Australia’s aged care system is the need to provide services across vast geographical areas, with density of population varying widely between urban and rural regions.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) had dire implications for the UK, creating massive unemployment and years of austerity. This paper looks at the underlying causes of the crisis, together with the reasons why financial regulation in the UK failed to prevent the financial crash. The UK sought to learn the lessons from its failure, and many inquiries, research reports and books have explored the causes and compounding factors. The book “Capital Failure” identified that trust was fundamental to the working of the financial sector, and that the erosion of trust and trustworthy behaviour has had a disastrous effect. Australia escaped relatively unscathed from the GFC, yet recent inquiries into the banking and superannuation sectors have revealed a similar dramatic decline in trustworthiness and ethical standards of behaviour. The article examines how the Australian banking environment evolved, the implication of recent developments including Fintech and Regtech, and what lessons Australia can learn from overseas experience.