Aug 5, 2026 · 28 min · 14 segments
What does it actually take to build a profession out of regulation, from scratch? Marcial Boo has spent three decades in UK public service, running four regulators across entirely different domains…
Marcial BooGuest
Simon CourtHost
Paul NewboyHost
Look, I've been in Europe the last little while and it's been a pretty warm summer for Europe, but it was great to get away because it's been a pretty cold winter in Melbourne.
Makes you realize that while we can complain about the challenges of getting a license or registering a car here, I think the Basque people have got a bit of an edge on us in making it complicated and time consuming.
Does your son see that? He's in his 30s and he had to get a license, his car license.
And then when it came to actually doing the test again, it was sort of only a week or so before they would tell you when the tests were available.
So quite just those simple stuff of making it easy to get through the licensing process.
And so it's nice to see an example of inefficiency abroad to make you appreciate what you have at home, I suppose.
Look, since I've been back, I've been reading quite a bit about how investigations occur in the healthcare sector and trying to understand what lessons there are.
And there's a big push to move from having a sort of root cause analysis approach, which is sort of a linear approach to looking at what causes failure.
to adopting the approach that's adopted in high-risk industries, which is a more holistic looking at the system and how the systems work together.
I think that's a really interesting question because when regulators do well or don't do well, it's not just down to one individual or one section or one issue.
Look, I've been in Europe the last little while and it's been a pretty warm summer for Europe, but it was great to get away because it's been a pretty cold winter in Melbourne.
Makes you realize that while we can complain about the challenges of getting a license or registering a car here, I think the Basque people have got a bit of an edge on us in making it complicated and time consuming.
Does your son see that? He's in his 30s and he had to get a license, his car license.
And then when it came to actually doing the test again, it was sort of only a week or so before they would tell you when the tests were available.
So quite just those simple stuff of making it easy to get through the licensing process.
And so it's nice to see an example of inefficiency abroad to make you appreciate what you have at home, I suppose.
Look, since I've been back, I've been reading quite a bit about how investigations occur in the healthcare sector and trying to understand what lessons there are.
And there's a big push to move from having a sort of root cause analysis approach, which is sort of a linear approach to looking at what causes failure.
to adopting the approach that's adopted in high-risk industries, which is a more holistic looking at the system and how the systems work together.
I think that's a really interesting question because when regulators do well or don't do well, it's not just down to one individual or one section or one issue.
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