Bringing back the Moa: Expert opinion
As the Regulatory Standards Bill goes before a select committee, Seymour responded to some of the criticism. Video / Mark Mitchell
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NZ Herald
18 hours ago
- NZ Herald
David Seymour issues regulations bill ultimatum as committee threatens to break Parliament
Murray's explanation: he promised a gig in 'a' central park in Newark, not the Central Park in New York. Hewitt, the fictional diplomat, and Winston Peters, the real life one, have precious little in common, but Act leader David Seymour fired a warning to his colleague across the Cabinet table this week over the NZ First leader's wavering support for the Regulatory Standards Bill, just in case Peters had been taking notes from his fictional public service subordinate. Peters and his colleague Shane Jones have floated making changes after the bill returns from select committee and then passing it, as promised in the coalition agreement. Sniffing a plot to water the bill down before it is passed, Seymour went public this week to remind his partners that the coalition agreement commits them to passing 'the' Regulatory Standards Bill, not 'a' Regulatory Standards Bill. What Seymour has said in public is consistent with what had previously been said in private. Sources have confirmed to the Herald that he has made it clear behind the scenes that the Regulatory Standards Bill's passage is as bottom line as it gets – and he's willing to walk away from the coalition over it, bringing down the Government and triggering an election. It won't come to that (probably) – the polls are too close to risk an election, particularly one triggered by internal instability. But the fact it even needs to be said is an example of how fraught things have become. In the early days of the coalition, to everyone's surprise, it was relations between Act and National that were the frostiest, with National's insistence on having its way rankling Seymour and Act, who believe that way of thinking is a hangover from the first-past-the-post era. Now it seems a vector of conflict has opened between Act and NZ First too, with both sides having a different view of this Government's kaupapa: Act is willing to risk short-term unpopularity, even losing an election, for long-term foundational change; NZ First is not. Acting Prime Minister David Seymour says the coalition is committed to passing the Regulatory Standards Bill. Photo / Mark Mitchell The tension in the Cabinet room is nothing like the inferno of anxiety burning away over the Finance and Expenditure Committee's investigation of the bill held over Zoom this week. Has there ever been a select committee like this? Technological changes at Parliament, a new era of social media politicking, and profound ill feeling against the Act Party after the Treaty Principles Bill have conspired to turn what might have been a fairly bland and technical few days of hearings into something of a circus. The bill sets out principles of 'good' regulation and requires ministers to assess legislative proposals against those principles, although it does not bind their hands in any way. It also creates a Regulatory Standards Board, appointed by the Minister for Regulation (though members would require Cabinet approval), that would independently decide whether legislation complied with the principles. The board can recommend changes, but that's where its power ends. The bill has a retrospective interest, meaning existing regulations will come under its gaze too. The objectors fall into two main camps: the first thinks the bill is a colossal waste of time and resource, unnecessarily ideological and will, at the margin, hamper but not block 'public good' regulation. As Seymour's own Regulations Ministry and the Legislative Design and Advisory Committee have said about the bill, it duplicates the work done by Regulatory Impact Statements, the Legislative Design and Advisory Committee, and Parliament's Regulations Review Committee. The principles themselves are not universal and are more accurately described as Act's principles of good regulation. They're not as contentious as you may think from the public outcry; they're more liberal than neoliberal, but if Act wanted this bill to last beyond the first 100 days of the next Labour Government it might have included a Treaty clause and a nod to collective rights. Former Revenue Minister David Parker passed a slightly less powerful Tax Principles Reporting Act in the last Parliament. These principles were still mostly left of centre, but they were consulted on in a bid to form some consensus before the legislation was passed (like much consultation, it was waste of time — the law was repealed in just three days less than a month after the coalition took office). These criticisms have been made in submissions, public commentary and in a polite but bloody Passchendaele of keyboard warfare in the Newsroom comments section. Their proponents are familiar faces on the select committee circuit, Wellington academics and lawyers associated with Victoria University, Jonathan Boston, Eddie Clark, Graeme Edgeler, Dean Knight and Sir Geoffrey Palmer. To somewhat oversimplify: the conundrum of the bill, in the view of these people, is not that the bill is a powerful constitutional innovation rushed through under urgency, but given its only real power is to shame ministers into being better regulators, it's unlikely to do much more than create a lot of unnecessary and unread paperwork. Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer is a vocal critic of the bill. Photo / Mark Mitchell A Government, using Parliament, will still be able to do almost anything it wants at any speed it wishes, with unread regulatory standards declarations filed neatly beside their section 7 Bill of Rights counterparts and their 'thanks, but no thanks' advice – the paper-thin checks and balances of our 'yeah, nah' constitution. Politics will always trump paperwork. As for unintended consequences, the biggest unintended consequence will be what the coalition does with all this advice. Ministers in a hypothetical second term may find themselves spending much of their days arguing with the Act party over why they're ignoring a regulations report arguing for change to this or that regulation. As an exasperated Boston described the effect of the law on a future government: 'why would multiple ministers want to make themselves look stupid not just once, but repeatedly, every year from here on potentially until eternity?'. Members of this group are concerned the bill will make certain things such as public health and environmental regulation more difficult, but are clear-eyed about the fact that the bill doesn't force this outcome. Power still rests with Parliament and ministers. The second camp of critics has a slightly wilder flavour. The group would include popular lawyer Tania Waikato, who is associated with the Toitū Te Tiriti group, Dame Anne Salmond and Te Pāti Māori's social media accounts. Waikato said the bill would 'entrench… far right political views' into the fabric of the country via a 'regulatory constitution' and its passage would raise 'significant red flags about the introduction of fascism to this country'. While Salmond wrote in Newsroom that the law would 'tie the hands' of the state if it wished to regulate 'private activities or initiatives that create public harm' (like smoking), by 'requiring' those who benefit from laws or regulations to compensate others for the losses of profit that may arise from such regulation. Te Pāti Māori, meanwhile, took to Instagram claiming the bill would let judges 'strike down Māori-focused laws'. The anxiety arising from this criticism was pictorially represented by submitter Annie Collins. She drew a stick figure Minister for Regulation, Seymour, sitting atop the flow chart of state, vaguely resembling, in pixelated Zoom form, the famous frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and held it aloft to the committee while voicing her fear the bill would lead to 'international corporations suing us'. The correctness of Waikato's critique is a matter of taste. The principles are certainly right of centre but it's a stretch to link the bill to anything fascist. Salmond's criticism is more straightforwardly incorrect. A principle of the bill is that those adversely affected by regulation be compensated, but as with everything else in the bill it doesn't force the Government to compensate anyone for anything. Some in the first basket of submitters noted the principles may burrow themselves into our laws through the courts. The Legislative Design and Advisory Committee also noted courts may 'read in' the principles when making decisions in the way the Bill of Rights has been 'read in' over the past three decades, but this bill specifically excludes allowing companies to sue the government. Te Pāti Māori's attack is flat out wrong – only one Parliamentary party has, this term, proposed allowing unelected officials to strike down laws and that is Te Pāti Māori itself, whose Tiriti commissioner (depending on which co-leader you talk to) could override the will of Parliament. For those of the Act persuasion, there's also a whiff of hypocrisy here – only a few years ago, during the pandemic, these sorts of attacks were swiftly labelled misinformation in the media and the wider public. There is a real sense on their side that public enforcement of the truth has a partisan bias. Act is taking things into its own hands, with unedifying attacks on Salmond and other critics as suffering from a 'derangement syndrome'. The challenge for Parliament is that the critiques of dubious factual merit are the ones that appear to be getting most pick-up. Pity Labour's MPs on the committee, opposing the bill for reasonable and justifiable grounds, but missing out on the attentional cut through garnered by the orgy of unfounded anxiety spread by its benchmates and their supporters. A story from veteran political journalist Richard Harman this week pondered the decline of Parliament's committees as a place of serious work, saying they'd become 'platforms for political protest'. One of the challenges faced by the committees is the sheer number of submissions. Nothing can be done about that – reducing people's right and ability to participate in democracy is a far greater evil than maintaining the genteel lie that all of these submissions are properly read and listened to. A bigger challenge is people using their oral submissions as a stage set for content creation rather than engaging with the bill in any substantive way (Waikato's 'fascism' submission falls into this category). This is a new problem. The streaming of committees only began during the first term of the Ardern Government and regular streaming of all public committees only began in the last Parliament. The streaming means submitters regularly clip up their appearances for use in political campaign videos. There's always been a performative element to select committees and campaign groups have, for decades, banged their particular drum in submissions that are only tangentially related to the bill in question. But the problem Parliament has now is the sheer number of submitters who submit in this way, vastly outweighing substantive submissions. What happens when voters' main engagement with the committee room is watching a social media video deliberately misinforming them about the nature of a law going through Parliament? What happens when the committees are all theatre and not, as the Conchords might say, Business Time?
NZ Herald
18 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Auckland steam ferry needs $5m to get afloat
David Seymour responds to migration statistics It comes after Stats NZ said the number of Kiwis who left for Australia last year was the highest in more than a decade.
Otago Daily Times
18 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Positively polarising
Controversy has never done Act New Zealand leader David Seymour any harm in the past, and he does not think it will do him any harm in the future either, he tells political editor Mike Houlahan. As David Seymour settles into a comfy chair in a warm Dunedin hotel, a hundred or so of his bitterest political foes are standing outside in the cold wind decrying the policies of he and the government he is a part of. Polarisation seems to pursue the Act New Zealand leader wherever he goes, and today is no exception: the warm welcome he is about to receive at a Business South meeting is contrary to the frigid reception he would have received had he ventured outside and around the corner to meet the protest rally. "I think, frankly, people want politicians at all levels who are prepared to stand for something and say what they believe in a way that's conciliatory and respectful, and that's what I seek to do," he says, shrugging off the suggestion that Act always needs to be polarising voters to ensure it maintains a high profile. "There is actually a whole lot of change Act is doing that is not getting attention. These Bills have got a lot of attention: the Treaty Principles Bill got a lot of attention, and the Regulatory Standards Bill has actually got attention as a result of the Treaty Principles Bill. "Most of my career I've supported the Regulatory Standards Bill and struggled to get people interested. Now people are interested because of political hype." Few pieces of legislation have excited the general public in recent years as those two Bills — both in the name of Mr Seymour. The first was voted down by Parliament, the second is almost certain to become law despite a procession of opponents to the legislation appearing before Parliament's finance and expenditure committee this week to decry it. "The standards of debate need to rise, and frankly, so many people are saying things about the Regulatory Standards Bill that are just so demonstrably untrue. We need to be able to call a spade a spade," Mr Seymour said. "If you look at our overall agenda, if you look at what Brooke [van Velden] is doing for holidays, the health and safety, labour law, contracting, Covid law, look at Nicole McKee on anti money laundering this week, firearms law, alcohol law. "Karen Chhour is gradually reshaping Oranga Tamariki, Simon Court is doing the resource management law. Andrew Hoggard's playing a role in biosecurity agriculture, with a very safe pair of hands there, even though a few chickens had to die ... having me as the deputy prime minister, and according to most accounts, being a safe pair of hands, I think that helps reassure people that Act is a safe vote." It is always dangerous reading anything in to polls this far out from an election — the day after speaking to the ODT the latest Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll came out, which showed Act steady on 9.1% but overtaken by junior coalition partner NZ First, on 9.8%. But Mr Seymour's contention that Act is no longer beholden to winning his Epsom seat has some credibility. Although the party has failed to poll in the mid-teens, as it did a couple of months prior to the 2023 election, it has equally never looked like dropping down anywhere near the 5% threshold ... and lest we forget, Mr Seymour's deputy Brooke van Velden now has an electorate seat of her own. "I think we've had two polls under 7% in the last five years, and both of those were over 6. Every other poll, and there's probably literally been hundreds in the last five years, have had us at an absolute minimum of 7, some as high as 18," Mr Seymour said. "So, yeah, I think it's fair to say we've been a long way from 5 ... but, you know, you can see Act looking to win more electorate seats at the next election. We're just casting around a bit at the moment." Words which may well send a shiver up the spine of National party management, given that any seat Act may actively tackle is likely to be one that the senior coalition partner holds ... and the example of Ms van Velden in Tamaki shows that Act can walk the talk. "We're not ready to say [where], but we are actively exploring," Mr Seymour said. "Remember, the seats belong to the voters. So the question is, what's best for the voters? People in Tamaki decided that having Brooke represent them would be better than the alternative, and there may be other seats where people decide that." Before we get to that election, there is the not inconsiderable matter of the local body elections to get past. In a novel initiative, Act has decided to officially contest council election for the first time, and the party has been putting out a press release a day in recent weeks promoting its newest recruit. The party has sometimes battled to find suitable candidates in the regions, and fielding in local body elections offers a low-risk environment where contenders for higher honours can test themselves and be tested in as real a simulation of a national election as can be managed. From an initial 700 people interested in standing for Act, the party had whittled the list down to 60. Mr Seymour doubted the election, or otherwise, of any Act-aligned councillors will be an indicator of Act's possible support a year from now, and said the undertaking was an experiment. "Number one, will people vote for a national level brand at local level? And that's what it is, although our candidates are certainly self-generated and local. We didn't pick them, they came to us from their local communities. "The second thing we're testing is what's the appetite for basically three things that Act stands for at the local level. One is being tougher on rates and the role of local government in doing less and spending less. Two is we're pro-car and we want to be able to drive our cars and not be basically forced to pay for modes of transport we don't use and have our carparks taken away. "And three is we believe in equal rights. We oppose the numerous genuflections that councils are making to what we view as a misconception of the Treaty. So it will be a test of the applicability of that brand and those concepts to local government. "But I suspect that next year's election will be about quite different issues and central government where people are more familiar with us." In 2023 — and most of 2022 for that matter — Act campaigned relentlessly, holding hundreds of town hall meetings, many of which Seymour spoke at. Act's 2026 election campaign will have to be different: the party is in government now and the deputy prime minister cannot be in Wanaka or Roxburgh as often as he might like. "The other way is digital media, and we'll do a lot more of that, but I love getting up and talking to people, and it's a great way to test where you're up to with the audience," Mr Seymour said. "And often the mood of the crowd and the responses you get and the questions they ask are a really good way of testing where people are up to." No doubt his friends outside could give him a sense of where some people are up to. "We know who our likely supporters are, and they're much younger than the people that come to the public meetings. I don't know why that is," Mr Seymour continued. "I suspect it's because people with children generally don't go to public meetings. One of the reasons I knew we were on to something in 2020, for the first time ever, I saw people with prams and push chairs at our public meetings. "I thought, that's someone who is making a really big effort ... That's when I realised that people were engaged in politics, and they wanted to engage with us." Freedom of speech upheld despite controversy Act New Zealand proudly proclaims itself as being the party of freedom of speech. There could be few better examples of that than when party deputy leader Brooke van Velden made unwanted history in May by using the "c" word for the first time in parliamentary debate in New Zealand. Few people knew that Ms van Velden was going to quote quite that verbatim from a newspaper column on pay equity law changes which had greatly offended her and other opposition MPs ... but party leader David Seymour did. Knowing that Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspected what was about to happen, Mr Seymour made a point of order to ask that Ms van Velden "be given a full opportunity to respond the way she wants to" — which, eventually, she did. "It was entirely her and her office, and I talked to her about it," Mr Seymour said. "I said, 'well, if you're absolutely sure it's what you want to do, then we of course support you. I think she took a stand against what was really a form of bullying, and I'm very proud of her for doing that." Mr Seymour said that Ms van Velden had thought the column and associated reporting was "disgraceful" and that it was completely in his deputy's character to be prepared to take decisive action to draw a line under those tactics. "I think it was a very impressive piece of politics from her."
