Regulatory Standards Bill: Unions, former MPs, lawyers and retired judge to submit

RNZ News

07-07-2025

ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour.
Photo:
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The second day of hearings on the proposed
Regulatory Standards Bill
will get underway at Parliament later on Tuesday morning.
The first day saw a
wave of opposition to the bill
, but the Regulation Minister was dismissing concerns.
While he had not watched all of the submissions from the first day, David Seymour said finding constructive criticism of the bill was like searching "for a needle in a haystack".
Groups submitting on the second day of hearings will include Toitū te Tiriti, the Taxpayers' Union, the Council of Trade Unions, Business NZ and the Law Society.
Individuals include former ACT MP Donna Awatere Huata, former Green MPs Kevin Hague and Eugenie Sage, lawyer Tania Waikato and retired judge David Harvey.
Much of the criticism on the first day was on the principles in the bill, which critics said elevated ACT ideology above health or environmental concerns.
The bill lists principles that Seymour believes should guide all law-making. These include:
Ministers introducing new laws would have to declare whether they meet these standards, and justify those that do not.
A new Regulatory Standards Board, appointed by the Minister for Regulation, could also review older laws and make non-binding recommendations.
"This Regulatory Standards Bill does not prevent a government or a Parliament from making a law or regulation. What it does do is create transparency so that the people can actually watch and understand what their representatives are doing," Seymour said.
But Sophie Bond, associate professor of geography from the University of Otago, said the principles would embed "libertarian ideology" at a constitutional level.
"The bill would not withstand an evaluation under even its own narrow terms. It's ill conceived, poorly drafted and undemocratic," she said.
Similarly, Kirsty Fong from Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga said it would "embed the ACT Party values and principles that are rooted in libertarian ideology that elevates individualism and profit at the expense of wellbeing".
Criticism was also directed at what was not in the bill: there is no mention of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
This led Rahui Papa from Pou Tangata National Iwi Chairs Forum to compare it to the Treaty Principles Bill, which was voted down at its second reading earlier this year.
"We think this is a relitigation of the Treaty Principles Bill under another korowai, under another cover. So we say the attacks keep on coming."
Unlike the Treaty Principles Bill, the Regulatory Standards Bill has more chance of success. National's coalition agreement with ACT contains a commitment to pass the bill through into law.
Natalie Coates from the Māori Law Society said Te Tiriti could not be "unstitched" from lawmaking.
"Its absence isn't, of course, a drafting oversight, but a deliberate omission that bucks a clear break from constitutional best practice and our treaty obligations."
She doubted, however, whether adding a treaty clause would fix the rest of the "fundamental problems" she saw in the bill.
Seymour said he was yet to hear an argument about why Te Tiriti should be included.
"If you can find any person that would give me a practical example of how putting the Treaty into Regulatory Standards Bill would change the outcome in a way that's better for all New Zealanders, then I'm open minded. I have been the whole time," he said.
"But so far, not a single person who's mindlessly said 'oh but it's our founding document, it should be there' can practically explain how it makes the boat go faster."
He acknowledged there were existing tools like Regulatory Impact Statements and the Regulations Review Committee, but questioned whether they were effective.
"What we're doing is taking things that the government already does in different ways, and we're putting them together in one black letter law that governments must follow so New Zealanders have some rights. There's nothing really new here," he said.
While the majority of submitters were opposed to the legislation, Ananish Chaudhuri, professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland spoke in favour.
"It puts ideas of effiency and a careful weighing of the costs and benefits of proposed regulation at the heart of the legislative process," he said.
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