The Productivity Commission yesterday recommended the transfer of consumer credit regulation from state and territory governments to the Australian government "without further review".In a draft report on its review of the consumer policy framework in Australia the Productivity Commission wrote that "the case for a national approach is well established".The commission scarcely bothered to supply a rationale: the facts and history of the disjointed birth and administration of the consumer credit code since the mid 1990s and sluggish coordination among local jurisdictions on the regulation of finance brokers and mortgage brokers are well enough known.The Productivity Commission - something of a deregulator by inclination and historical bias - made clear that it proposed only one actual new regulation in relation to the consumer finance arena, which is to require brokers to offer consumers access to an ASIC-approved dispute resolution process (and which most brokers do in any event).The commission did refer to a "lack of policy responsiveness to changing circumstances", the unilateral introduction by some states of parochial rules that undermine the supposedly uniform consumer credit code and "prolonged delays in implementing even widely supported reforms".The Productivity Commission recommended the consolidation of existing dispute resolution schemes into "a single, umbrella, dispute resolution scheme for consumers, but with the option for existing schemes to retain their independence as arms within this new entity."This is not all that far removed from current practice, with the Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman admitting more than one hundred non-bank entities in recent years. The BFSO office in Melbourne also provides operational support to many smaller schemes.These steps would, the commission argued in the draft report, provide "better, less costly, protection for consumers of the services concerned" and allow "more timely adjustment of policy settings to changing requirements".