The ins and outs of what is in, and out, of the Standards Bill
The finance and expenditure select committee — or at least a Covid lockdown-reminiscent Zoom version of it — spent all week considering submissions on Mr Seymour's trophy legislation, the Regulatory Standards Bill.
Predictably, given the avalanche of criticism the Bill has received in the leadup to the hearings, the vast majority of submitters were implacably opposed to it, for a wide variety of reasons.
This, somewhat disingenuously, mystifies Mr Seymour, who professes the Bill — which he has tried and failed to pass in previous parliaments — is nothing more than an attempt to improve the law-making process in New Zealand.
This would be done by each piece of proposed regulation and legislation being reviewed through the lens of a set of regulatory principles ... and therein lies the fundamental issue critics have with the Bill.
Put simply, what makes a good law is a contestable idea, and what Mr Seymour thinks should underpin responsible and responsive legislation is not a universally shared concept.
The Bill does have a proposed safeguard in place — a committee to oversee its function — but many submitters also doubted it would, or could, be a truly independent watchdog.
Some things in the regulatory principles are non-contentious: few would argue with laws being consistent with existing legislation, effective, having heed of the rule of law and not impinging unnecessarily on rights.
But opposition to the Bill revolves, generally, around two things: what has been put in the Bill and what has been left out.
What has been put in are things like guarantees of property rights and personal freedoms, and what has been left out is any consideration of the place and role of the Treaty of Waitangi or environmental protections.
Bill supporters have been reassuring on this front, arguing that the principle that the public interest be considered when drafting laws and regulations covers a multitude of concerns; opponents, however, lack faith that those who will determine what the public interest actually is will truly reflect their concerns.
A variety of southerners appeared before the committee this week. The first salvo from the region was one of the few in favour of the Bill, Queenstown's Basil Walker (once briefly an Act candidate) arguing that New Zealand could not increase economic growth, and hence income from business taxation, without the sort of better governance reforms the draft legislation proposed.
Much more scepticism was evinced soon after by the Dunedin City Council, whose chief in-house lawyer Karilyn Canton said that the council was concerned the Bill was neither necessary or desirable, and overly narrow in some parts and over-simplified in others.
She said the council felt the Bill ran counter to existing Local Government Act requirements concerning consideration of Treaty of Waitangi issues and environmental concerns. It also felt that it would be required to review bylaws and plans for their compliance to the Bill's principles — ironically adding to compliance costs when the Bill purported to reduce red tape.
Speaking of the DCC, Tuesday featured a blast from the past when former mayor Aaron Hawkins (who was quite the juxtaposition to his preceding submitter, the Taxpayers Union) got his five minutes of fame.
Mr Hawkins did not hold back, rejecting the Bill in its entirety — "no amount of tinkering can save this Bill from itself" — and saying he was appalled by Mr Seymour's attacks on opponents of the legislation.
"Ultimately Mr Seymour's attacks leave me confused because either this Bill is necessary to shape all of our legislation coming through the House, as he says, or it's nothing to be worried about, as he also says, because it cannot be both."
University of Otago Wellington public health academics Calvin Cochran and Amanda D'Souza did not have the same high-flying rhetoric but each had deep concerns over the Bill, which they felt posed unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and Maori/Crown relations. The law change could stymie future legislation on tobacco and vaping control, a potential sugar tax on junk food and drinks and controls on alcohol abuse.
Mr Cochrane, a research fellow, further noted that health positive legislation — specifically the smokefree environment laws — might never have been passed had they first had to clear a scrutiny of their infringement on property rights.
That afternoon the Otago University Students Association wheeled out its representative (and Labour-backed council candidate) Jett Groshinski. OUSA, in the manner of Mr Hawkins earlier, was not pulling any punches either, calling the Bill not just flawed, but dangerous.
"Let's not sugarcoat it, this is a calculated attempt to rewrite how we make laws in this country, shifting power away from the public and towards an ideology that puts profits before people."
Completing a local body candidate-packed lineup of southern submissions, on Thursday the Green Party opted for the party's Dunedin mayoral candidate Mickey Treadwell as the frontman for its organisational submission in opposition to the Bill.
The Greens, unsurprisingly, highlighted the Bill's "egregious omission" of any reference to the Treaty, the environment and the Bill of Rights Act.
More locally, Mr Treadwell felt it would create legal ambiguity for local bylaws, plans, liquor bans and freedom camping rules.
Finally, and even more locally, he raised the spectre of residents in South Dunedin, from where he was zooming in, being ankle-deep in climate change-fuelled flooding, and asked rhetorically what the Bill's claimed improving of regulatory standards might do for them.
Well, perhaps all the paper the Bill has generated this week might be used to build bulwarks and other defences?
mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz
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Thank you Cam, for that kind introduction. Thank you James for visiting and sharing your thinking. Western democracies have lost their mojo, and your book explains why. Most of us want to see universities as sources of enlightened thinking, but too often they leave us disappointed. They seem to resent the society that funds them, and their ideas corrode instead of enlighten its values. The corrosive idea is that there are many realities. Your reality, it seems, depends on your identity. They always say, speaking as an x, y, z person. They say where you come from matters more than where you're going. Hidden in your book is hope. If you can define a problem, you can solve it. The problem is the lack of shared reality. The real world unites us. When we all muck in and work on the same problems, we realise how much we have in common. Today I'd like to show how we can only solve voters' number one problem, and others, with less finger pointing and more problem solving. Acknowledgements Speaking of tall poppies, I'd like to thank some here today. You all put ACT MPs in Government, and they're delivering a wall of real change to address our country's problems. Brooke, Nicole, Andrew, Karen and Simon are hardworking heroes in our Government. ACT's caucus is not just our Ministers though, there's five other MPs. Our feistiest and savviest new MP couldn't be here today. Laura McClure's deepfake porn bill addresses an urgent need. Her campaign for it has been reported worldwide. She has a huge future as an effective politician. Parmjeet Parmar is our brainiest and hardest working Parliamentarian. Every weekend she practices hand-to-hand retail politics. She also has three science degrees and owns one business, more the entire Green Party caucus combined. Cam Luxton is Parliament's only Licensed Building Practitioner, and its most practical MP. His advocacy for sensible liquor laws looks likely to succeed this term, and he is on track to give hunters a say in conservation for the first time. ACT's own pocket battleship, our whip, Todd Stephenson. Todd's executive experience looking after our Caucus and Parliamentary operations is invaluable. He is also picking up the End of Life Choice baton to give more people control over how they go and when if they're suffering badly. Finally. His kidneys may only be giving five per cent, but the rest of him is giving 200. Give it up for Mark Cameron! The authentic voice of Rural New Zealand, has pulled off an extraordinary feat. Very few Government back benchers remain nationally visible, but Mark remains at the forefront of every rural debate. These MPs, and the Ministers you've heard from, are supported by an excellent staff in Wellington, our electorates, and in the Party office. They in turn are supported by you. I'd like to thank our volunteers, our donors, our ACTivate committees, and every person who gets out and pushes our vision of a free and equal society. Thank you. All these people have something in common. They know that tall poppy syndrome doesn't build homes, grow businesses or create jobs. Tall poppy keeps everyone smaller. If hard work, courage, and results make you a tall poppy, I'm proud that ACT has a whole field of them. Finally can I acknowledge nearly fifty New Zealanders who are standing for ACT in their local Council this October. Councils don't just put up rates. Council bureaucracy puts up every price in every community. Building a competing supermarket costs too much, so do groceries. So do new houses and kids swimming lessons, council dysfunction pushes up the price of everything. So, who do you vote for to get some common sense in your council? You get the little booklet, you haven't heard the names, you tick someone, then they disappoint you. A few years later you ask yourself, are they even the one you ticked? Ticking an ACT local candidate guarantees what you're getting. Someone who wants to cut out waste, save your rates, let you drive (and park) your car, without dividing your community by when their ancestors got here. If those values sound like you, I hope you'll support an ACT Local candidate in your area. Half-Time Break Back in central Government, it's half time, and time for a report card. Our Ministers are making real change like we campaigned on, but we can point to our influence beyond the portfolios we're directly responsible for, too. The Government is spending a smaller share of the economy every year, and ACT's been at the forefront of saving the taxpayer money. Brooke's gutsy return of common sense to pay equity, making it about actual gender discrimination, is the most obvious example of that. By the Government taking a smaller share, there is more for your farm, your firm, and your family. We are reversing Labour's mistake of being kind to criminals, and waiting to see if they'll be kind back. Instead we are upholding innocent peoples' rights by giving criminals more consequences, with ACT's three strikes applying minimum sentences for repeat offenders. Violent crime is coming down, and the values of our community are improving. We have removed the divisive Māori Health Authority, co-Governed Three Waters, and are putting Māori wards to the vote. We are delivering social services on need not race, and we are rebalancing the curriculum including Section 127 of the Education Act. The Government is restoring the spirit of a country built on equal rights regardless of birth. Our partners abandoned us defining the Treaty Principles, so we lost the vote. That's a shame, but there's something more important than winning the vote. We won the argument. Nobody can explain why New Zealand is better off divided by race, or why honouring the Treaty requires racial division. If they could, why didn't they do it in the Parliamentary debate? It is now a matter of time before the Treaty Principles Bill or something like it passes. If it's not, where are the examples of countries which flourish on the basis of division. Everyone here who's stood for equal rights in the face of insanity and inanity can stand proud. You have made it possible for New Zealand to find a better path. A free society can only exist if someone puts the idea up in lights, and that's what you have done. On healthcare we are putting productivity above bureaucracy. Since 2018 the health budget has gone from $18 billion to $33 billion. Where did the 83 per cent increase go? It was wasted on endless restructures and ideology that didn't answer the simple question: How do you get more patients seen to faster, or avoid them needing attention in the first place? Now we are increasing productivity at the patient level, instead of management restructures, to get the full value of that 83 per cent increase. Get vaccination rates up, and wait times down, train more doctors, build more hospitals, fund new cancer medicines, reform Pharmac, improve access to innovative medicines that are available overseas. In each case, the cost of living, crime, co-Governance, and health, it is too early to declare victory. It's certainly too early for a victory lap, but we can point to action taken and improving results. Has the Government gone as far as ACT would on the issues? No it has not. Has it gone further than it would without ACT? Time and again you can be assured your voice and your vote have made the future of this country freer and more equal than any other party could have. That's why ACT next year will be campaigning to keep the Government and keep making it better. Is it Enough? I describe the last six years as the long trouble. In hindsight, March 15 started a period of endless upheaval. Before then we had happier and simpler times. Issues were things like 'can John Key make us vote for a tea towel as a flag?' Since that terror attack, we've faced one upheaval after another. Ten months later we heard about a place called Wuhan. For many of us it was the first time then, but we'll never forget it now. In many ways we are still paying for COVID through the cascade of inflation, interest rates, and recession. The cost of everything remains the key problem people face. Prices have stopped rising, but they haven't gone back down. The twenty per cent increases of the past four years are now baked in. Baked in to the power bill, the weekly shop, and the price of everything is that 20 per cent. The question is how we're going to deal with it, and that's where I come back to James Lindsay's work. Finger Pointing The six years of long trouble has left us more open to blaming someone than usual. The scourge of identity politics has left us even more primed than usual to point the finger. The post-modern disease has set New Zealanders against each other. The idea that our differences are greater than our similarities is toxic. It's harder to solve real, practical problems when you're busy finding reasons to resent your fellow New Zealander. It's tangata whenua against tangata tiriti. It's boomer versus zoomer. It's wealthy against poor. It's urban against farmer. It's employer against employee. It's tenant against landlord. The close cousin of identity politics is zero sum thinking. Zero sum thinking is one of the most dangerous frames of thinking that has affected western society in these past two decades, and it fits like a glove with identity politics. It's the idea that, for you to do better, someone else has to do worse. Now this has happened because it is a deeply human response to divide the world into heroes and villains, people who do good and people who do bad. It's true that happens sometimes, but the reality is that many people are trying to make things work. What's more the success of one group very often benefits the other. Peter Beck's genius has made him very rich, but it's also ignited a New Zealand space industry. When we lose the insight of positive-sum thinking, believing in zero-sum makes people more divided, poorer, worse off politically, worse off culturally, worse off economically. The reality is that there's only five million of us. We all have far more in common than what separates us. Our success is interdependent. The problems we face are shared. The solutions will only be visible if we see that first. The Rental Policy Mistake Take the example of high rents. This country had, and still has, a problem with housing. The best land in the world is practically empty, but there's not enough habitat for humans. Being short of housing causes so many other problems. Students struggle at school when they're moved from auntie to uncle and one address to another. Young people can't see their own way to a property owning democracy, and despair. The Government spends $5 billion per year on rental subsidies. Over the period of the last Government, the average rent rose from $400 to $590. What followed was a failure of leadership. Instead of pointing out that we face a common problem that we should all join hands and solve together, Labour gave their supporters a scapegoat. They decided that landlords were to blame, and I suspect there's a few reasons for that. Number one, politics. There are three million voters and only 120,000 are landlords so there's 23 other voters per landlord. They say the most important skill in politics is the ability to count. Two, they have an asset. Many are very cash poor, but they look like someone who can pay. Three, they're the people collecting the rent. They're collecting it to meet a bunch of other costs, but it's easiest to connect them with the price rises. So, Labour taxed landlords more. I'm proud to say ACT restored mortgage interest deductibility, but from the time Labour removed it, to the time we restored it, the average weekly rent rose over $100. Since our changes, it's actually fallen. But Labour weren't finished. They decided to change the Residential Tenancies Act, to the point that landlords and tenants were almost co-owners in property. A fixed-term tenancy would automatically roll over. To evict, the onus was on the landlord to prove three incidents in three months. None of these policies worked. They failed to recognise that landlords and tenants faced the same basic problem: the high cost of housing in New Zealand. Both parties really needed ways to reduce their costs, but zero-sum politics distracted everyone from that. Now we've taken the tax off, and laid out a program to get more housing built. We analysed the problem and realised landlords and tenants alike both needed more homes built. High interest rates, too much tax, and not enough supply drives up costs. Landlords are funded by tenants, so the costs get passed on. Realising that we have more in common than separates us allows us to solve problems. If everyone wanted more supply, then the test for good policy was 'will this increase supply?' Better resource consenting means it's easier to get projects consented. Better infrastructure funding, such the replacement to Labour's Three Waters reforms, means it's easier to get new buildings connected. Faster building consents means less time waiting to build things. Easier access to new building materials will mean more competition and lower prices. These are concrete changes to policy, designed to make it easier to build more houses. More supply makes for a renters' market, with weekly rents actually falling. The rental market experience tells us something about how to solve our problems, and the pattern applies everywhere. Scapegoating licenced firearms owners didn't make us safer, in fact the opposite. The truth is that licenced firearm owners and the rest of us all want the same thing: the safe use of firearms, and a legal framework that allows it. Scapegoating farmers hasn't made them better environmentalists. The truth is that farmers and the rest of us both want the same thing: to look after the land so it keeps its value and productive capacity. Scapegoating employers didn't increase real wages. The truth is that employers and employees both want the same thing, to produce more wealth so they can take more home. Banning oil and gas exploration didn't achieve anything but smash the confidence to invest in New Zealand. Blaming someone might feel good. We think that building something feels better. Whether you rent or own, farm or teach, build or tend, your future depends on solving the same problems, not blaming different people. The Cost of Living Today the biggest challenge we face is the cost of living. People find their dollar doesn't stretch too far anymore, but there's something else besides prices. People are tired after six long years of trouble. Tempers are short, everyone feels it. You can understand people wanting to go after the banks or the supermarkets or the power companies. They're a bit like landlords. A very small percentage of voters work in these industries. They appear to have money. They are the ones collecting the money, so right in the firing line. It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to give a speech saying they're crooked and need to be punished somehow. They should be taxed somehow, have their businesses broken up, or be watched over by even toothier watchdogs. It's the curse of zero sum thinking. I know that is a political risk to say anything else. People will pile on and say I'm defending big business, or whatever, but political risks are part of leadership. We need a more collaborative approach. We need to ask ourselves how we address the shared challenge of getting time-sensitive products to a spread out population living along a 1500 kilometre-long mountain range. The right amount of stock, to the right place, at the right time, at the right price. It's not easy, but at least everyone wants the same thing. If only we can all realise it. The Government has made a good start, with its Request for Information, soliciting more competition in supermarkets. This is something ACT has been saying for at least three years. I was asked at the end of last year how ACT would do it and I said. "…if it was my job, the first thing I'd do is ask some global supermarket chains, hey, why haven't you invested in New Zealand yet? Get the list of reasons and start ticking them off." That's now happening, and there are more ideas to enhance competition waiting in the wings. We want to avoid the mistakes of envy and vengeance that didn't work getting rents down. We want to see competition and innovation get prices down. Number One: Give confidence Tell the world it's safe to invest in New Zealand. The only way we get better services is with more investment. If we want more of the right stuff to show up in the right quantity in the right place at the right time, then we need more stores, state-of-the-art supply chains, and new distribution centres to be built. That requires investment, from people inside New Zealand and outside. We should state to the world that New Zealand is a safe place to invest. Your property rights will be respected, because the Government makes laws carefully. We will not be forcibly separating your business or forcing you to sell to your competitors. If you doubt that matters, just ask the oil and gas industry. When Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First pulled the rug out from the industry, we learned a hard lesson. As Chris Liddell said in a recent speech, New Zealand needs foreign investment, but foreign investment doesn't need New Zealand. Now we have to use taxpayer money to show the oil and gas industry we're sorry and want them back. Number two: Level the playing field with multi-nationals Make the Grocery Supply Code go both ways. Labour made supermarkets negotiate with their suppliers in good faith, but not the other way around. The idea was to protect the orchardist in Central Otago or the strawberry grower in Pukekohe from the much larger supermarket. They forgot that most things in the supermarket on supermarket shelves come from much larger suppliers. If you think Woolworths New Zealand is a big company, try Coca-Cola, Procter and Gamble, or Unilever. They also charge more to Woolworths New Zealand than Woolworths Australia. The New Zealand Government should not stop our supermarkets from negotiating aggressively with multinational corporations. The Grocery Supply code should be made two-way. Number Three: Pass a fast-track omnibus bill Parliament should pass a one-stop-shop law for any applicant who wants to build a chain of ten or more supermarkets. The law should get their land zoned, resource consents issued, and any Overseas Investment Consents issued in one go. They should also get a liquor licence automatically, because alcohol policy is a nightmare for anyone trying to open a new store, but very little alcohol harm comes from supermarkets. Nothing would send a clearer signal that New Zealand is serious than a bespoke legislative welcome mat than giving permission for, say, Walmart to set up a whole chain in one go. I hope this will bring a serious extra chain to retail in New Zealand. Even if it doesn't, just the possibility of a new competitor can help keep competitive pressure on the incumbents. If it doesn't work, we'll know that either our market is more competitive than we thought, or we have some other problem. Number Four: Dump Labour's reforms The Labour Party bet the farm on grocery industry reform. They passed the Grocery Industry Bill. They set up the Grocery Commissioner. They required endless monitoring and put millions of dollars a year in costs that are now paid by, you guessed it, the long-suffering consumer and taxpayer. Now, here's the interesting thing. Labour are constantly going on about the cost of living and how terrible food prices are under the coalition Government. But if their reforms worked, wouldn't they be taking credit? If policies add cost, instead of saving us money, and not even their architects will defend them, they should go. Conclusion Those are four practical steps the ACT Party advocates to save New Zealanders money, and they could all be done by the end of the year. If you're looking for finger pointing, don't look here. We are interested in problem solving. If you want to find a scapegoat, you can, but it still won't work. We tried it with landlords, we tried it with oil and gas, we tried it with farmers, employers, and licenced firearm owners. Every time Government goes after a group in society, the problem gets worse. With the cost of living the solution is not regulation but competition. Business should fear competition, not their own Government. In that is a wider lesson about how we escape the long trouble of the past six years. We New Zealanders have one thing, and one thing only in common. Every one of us is marked out by the fact that we or our ancestors travelled further for a better tomorrow than anyone else on earth. That pioneering spirit is the New Zealand spirit, and it brings a unity more powerful than any superficial divisions people like to find. The scourge of identity politics has pulled us apart, but it is time for us to come together again, and start problem solving. I said in my Maiden Statement that 'You can tell everything you need to know about a person's politics by acquiring their sincere answer to a simple question: 'Is wealth a zero-sum game or not?' Eleven years later, the question is no less important. We face many challenges after six years of trouble, and there's only five million of us. We can either face it divided by identity politics, and the poison of the zero-sum mindset, or united in the belief that we face similar challenges and one person's success can lead to another's. Being free and equal is not just something nice to have. It's the foundation for the problem solving we need to do as a country. If we're going to succeed, first we must be free and equal. That's what ACT will be campaigning to do from now to the next election, and I thank you for your support in this crucial mission. Thank you very much.
