Frydenberg will be attacking easier targets. He is set to take on weights and measures acts that he says set the standards for calibrating imperial measuring equipment during the 1960s transition to the metric system, and a war service homes regulation that set rates of interest charged in the '60s. Repeal day is a stunt copied from the US. It would be fair to say that repealing these types of laws - and they are the only types Frydenberg mentions - will achieve nothing whatsoever when it comes to repealing red tape that matters. "It might remove irritants, but it's actually fictitious; it's ghosts, red-tape ghosts," was the assessment of the father of the competition reforms, Professor Fred Hilmer, at the same seminar last Friday. "I'll give you a silly example," he said referring to his own experience as vice-chancellor of the University of NSW. "Under the Audit Act, a university has to file accounts to the Parliament for every one of its subsidiaries. That would be a book centimetres thick. We don't. No one does it. And they'll repeal it. " Removing laws that cause actual damage is harder.

Newsagents are forbidden by restrictive agreements from poaching each other's customers. The former prime minister John Howard went out on a limb to persuade the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to back off on its plan to allow competition, declaring the restrictions "part of our way of life". The Community Pharmacy Agreement between the government and Pharmacy Guild prevents a new pharmacy from opening up within 1.5 kilometres of an old one (unless it's in a shopping centre). When a qualified pharmacist tried to open up in the ACT suburb of Hackett in 2012, she was told she couldn't because there was already a pharmacy in Watson, 1.345 kilometres away. Had her shop been 155 metres to the south she could have served the suburb and provided competition. If the red tape mollycoddling existing pharmacies was removed altogether supermarkets would be able to dispense medicines at all hours of the day using qualified pharmacists. They could force down prices. It would be in the spirit of the Hilmer reforms, but whenever a politician suggests pharmacists should face the same sort of competition as other businesses, friendly chemists hit their customers with petitions to sign while they are waiting for prescriptions.

And there's taxis. At the seminar to commemorate the 21st anniversary of the Hilmer reforms, Productivity Commission chief Peter Harris noted similarities. Existing businesses in all three areas have been protected by red tape for so long that they are under attack in any case. For newsagents he said the decline in circulation and the rise of social media had done "what regulatory reform could not". Taxis face a $3.5 billion threat from Uber. That's how much Google has just paid for an app that connects passengers directly to drivers at the touch of a button. "Three point five billion looks remarkable for a taxi booking app," Harris said.

"This suggests that there is much more scope for reform gains than just a convenient online booking service. I am not going to speculate what they might be. "Without taking sides I merely note that Google is not the sort of entity that will go away quietly." Even chemists are feeling "the hot breath of technology-driven competition". "I will not comment on the position in Australia, but both Canada and the United States are experiencing the impact of online competition jumping over regulatory boundaries," he said. "According to media reports, Canada's much cheaper regulated pricing of pharmacy products - a 200 per cent cost difference in the 10 most prescribed drugs in New York state - attracts scripts from the US to the extent that parcels are now being scrutinised by border agencies."

Tony Abbott has just commissioned the first full-scale review of competition policy since Hilmer 21 years ago. What he does in response to it will say far more about what he really thinks of red tape than will ''repeal day''. It'll show whether he hates red tape enough to take on his friends. Peter Martin is economics editor of The Age. Twitter: @1petermartin