
Show Notes
Rob Hortle spent more than 25 years in workplace regulation, most recently as the inaugural Commissioner of what is now the Workforce Inspectorate Victoria. In this first episode of In Practice – a sub-series of The Modern Regulator Podcast featuring longer conversations with individual practitioners – Paul Leavoy talks with Rob about what it actually takes to build a regulator's capability from the ground up. In this episode he talks about the design and governance decisions that shaped the inspectorate from day one, why culture doesn't improve in a straight line, how proportionate enforcement works in practice, and why he thinks trustworthiness is a more useful goal than trust. The Modern Regulator (TMR) Podcast is for regulators and regulatory-adjacent professionals in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and other stable democracies who care about the craft of regulation: stewardship, capability, posture, and practice rather than just politics. For more on this conversation, read our previously published feature on Rob and his work on TMR. Subscribe to TMR's newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight. Follow TMR on LinkedIn for new episodes and articles.
More from The Modern Regulator Podcast
What happens when the process meant to protect the environment ends up killing off the very species it was designed to save?
What does it actually take to build a profession out of regulation, from scratch?
In part two, the conversation shifts from the reform story to the bigger questions.
What does it actually feel like to move from shaping regulation to enforcing it?
Keith Manch has spent nearly five decades regulating almost every major domain of New Zealand public life, from competition law and consumer affairs to gambling, real estate, maritime safety, aviation, and now land transport. In this episode he talks about regulation as a single discipline, the origins of G-REG and the National Regulators Community of Practice, the hard work of building capability across systems, and why he now says that regulation is a political act.