From technocrat to transformer
Rebecca Billings has seen regulation from nearly every angle. With more than 25 years in government, consulting, and oversight roles, she now serves as Commissioner at the Essential Services Commission of Victoria (ESCV), Commissioner at the Essential Services Commission of South Australia (ESCOSA), and board member at the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA). She is also the current Chair of the National Regulators Community of Practice (NRCoP), Australia’s largest professional network for regulators.
Her journey traces the evolution of regulation in Australia – from economic technocracy to an increasingly human-centred, impact-led approach. With a strategic mind and a clear voice, Billings is helping shape what it means to regulate in a time of complexity, transition, and constrained resources.
We spoke ahead of NRCoP’s 2025 conference in Brisbane. Our conversation ranged from her early days implementing red-tape reforms, to new thinking around influence and outcomes, to what’s next for regulatory practice across Australia and New Zealand.
Early lessons in regulation and reform
Billings began her career during a wave of reform inspired by the UK’s privatisation agenda and the introduction of Australia’s National Competition Policy.
“Coming out of that, my first job was at an economic consultancy firm when those were really nascent… I got the opportunities right from the start of my career to work with really senior practitioners who had been in that space, and from that point, I realised that economics was only part of the story.”
After four years in consulting, she moved into the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance, where she led major reforms in reducing regulatory burden. The work was practical, cross-cutting, and formative.
“Pretty early on in my career, having that experience from a whole-of-government perspective was a great opportunity for me to see pretty much every single regulatory framework and sector in Victoria… and get an understanding across the economy.”
This exposure gave her a sense of how regulatory systems intersect, and how often the challenges are less unique than they appear.
“From the outside, every regulator will say that they’re experiencing unique complex issues, but when you strip it all back, it is often very similar issues at its core.”
The quiet power of influence
Today, Billings is especially focused on influence and what she calls the “soft powers” of regulation – those forms of persuasion that fall outside formal mandates.
“For me, it is about moral suasion and influence, and that requires a real level of maturity – to be able to insert yourself where you don’t have natural or explicit power.”
“For me, it is about moral suasion and influence, and that requires a real level of maturity – to be able to insert yourself where you don’t have natural or explicit power.”
She sees this not just as a tactical skill but as a necessary capability for regulators navigating uncertainty, political change, or system-wide risks.
“That goes from where you can see harm or risk that you don’t have a legislative responsibility for – how can you encourage behaviour change within your regulated entities? And it is about how you can influence policy makers and government.”
It also means challenging organisational inertia:
“Just thinking that the way that we have done this for the past five or past ten years is going to work for the next five or ten years… and to sit back and wait for someone to make that change – that’s the assumption I get most frustrated with.”
A commission in transition
Billings was reappointed for a second five-year term as Commissioner at ESCV in early 2025. Her first term coincided with a significant shift in posture for the organisation.
“We went from never issuing a compulsory information gathering notice, a penalty notice, an enforceable undertaking… through to doing all of those things, including having a significant court outcome in the Victorian Supreme Court.”
This enforcement-first posture, she says, was necessary to establish credibility. But her second term is bringing a shift in tone.
“Our strategy is all tied to how are we going to make a difference through the regulatory actions that we undertake… the regulatory posture that we have to take is much more nuanced.”
“The regulatory posture that we have to take is much more nuanced.”
ESCV is now experimenting with a more outcomes-based strategy and rebalancing short-term consumer protection with long-term consumer interests. That shift comes with new challenges in measurement and accountability.
“I think it’s a really important part of committing to being impact driven and to actually hold a mirror up to yourself and self-evaluate.”
Rewriting the rulebook?
Despite the outward change, Billings notes that much of the regulatory architecture remains rooted in 1990s-era frameworks. In sectors like energy and water, that dissonance is starting to show.
“The legislative frameworks and particularly the approach to economic regulation has been set in stone for… coming up to 30 years now. But what has shifted is the environment around us.”
Climate transition, cost-of-living pressures, and distrust in markets are all testing the assumptions built into those systems. Some regulators, she says, are responding by shifting from set-and-forget approaches to performance-based oversight and consumer-centred thinking.
“There’s been a lot of focus now on going, OK, well, how can regulators within their regulatory frameworks… both think about the impact on consumers from an outcomes perspective, but also how do we incentivise the regulated entities to be putting consumers at the heart of what they do.”
That shift has demanded new capabilities within regulators themselves – not just technical teams, but a diversity of skill sets working together.
Steering NRCoP into the future
As Chair of NRCoP, Billings now finds herself leading a national community of 7,500 regulators across 140 organisations. She sees the group as uniquely placed to build a new kind of regulatory culture.
“For me, that is really about linking into what does it mean to be part of a community of practice, and that has to be about the concept of regulatory stewardship and how regulators can lift up out of their day-to-day practice and learn from each other, be inspired by each other and supported by each other to do the hard job that we do every day.”
Under her leadership, NRCoP is undergoing a strategic reset. That includes a new long-term plan, deeper support for state and territory chapters, and new initiatives to demonstrate the value of community in a constrained funding environment.
“The number one thing is agility and adaptability, and that’s not easily taught.”
What regulators need now
So what are the critical skills for the next generation of regulators?
“The number one thing is agility and adaptability, and that’s not easily taught.”
She stresses the importance of organisational culture – particularly around stewardship, collaboration, and cross-agency thinking.
“It really means building relationships and connections and understanding how you can influence on a day-to-day basis.”
She also points to a digital gap that regulators urgently need to close.
“We’re really at ground zero in this. I don’t think that there’s any regulator who is top of school at this at the moment… if our regulatory entities are going harder, faster than us, then that means we’re not going to understand the sectors we’re trying to regulate.”
Role models and change agents
When asked who inspires her, Billings doesn’t point to theorists or headline figures. Instead, she names colleagues who are transforming systems from within:
“I am inspired by the change agents that I see around the place… I’m much more about someone who’s on the ground and really trying to make a difference within their environment.”
She highlights Gerard Brody (ESCV Chair), Scott Hanson (APVMA CEO), Sharon Deano (ESCV Enforcement), and Kim Weimer (ESCOSA Executive Director of Digital Transformation) as examples of internal leaders who have driven meaningful, often difficult change.
A regulator for our time
Rebecca Billings brings both pragmatism and vision to her many roles. She has walked the halls of Treasury and boardrooms of consultancy firms, and now helps lead key regulatory institutions and Australia’s largest network of regulators.
What defines her work today is a refusal to accept the default. She champions impact, transparency, and influence. She questions inherited assumptions. And she continues to make the case that regulation is not just about compliance – it’s about outcomes, public value, and the long game.
