Regulatory Standards Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Regulatory Standards Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move, That the Regulatory Standards Bill be now read a second time.

This bill is a crucial piece of legislation for improving the long-term quality of regulation in our country and, ultimately, allowing New Zealanders to live longer, happier, healthier, and wealthier lives. In a nutshell, if red tape and regulation are holding New Zealanders back because politicians find it politically rewarding to tie them in red tape, then we need to make regulating less rewarding for politicians by putting more sunlight on their activities. That is how the Regulatory Standards Bill will help New Zealand get its mojo back.

This bill turns the explanation from politicians passing laws that restrict our freedoms from “Because we said so” into “Because here is the justification, according to a set of principles.” To the rest of my colleagues across the House: if you want to tax someone, if you want to take or impair their property, if you want to restrict their livelihood, well, you can still do it, but you’ll face tough questions about the impact that those actions have on people’s property rights, their freedom, and the compliance of your proposal with the rule of law. It does this by introducing principles of responsible regulation into primary legislation, with a focus on good lawmaking processes and the effect of lawmaking on existing interests and liberties.

When making legislation, agencies and lawmakers will have to consider the principles and be transparent about those considerations. Agencies will need to confirm that the legislation and the process for developing it has been reviewed for consistency with the principles, and summarise any inconsistencies with those principles. That work will need to be published, and, where an inconsistency is identified, the responsible Minister or the maker of any secondary legislation will need to explain the reasons why.

Let’s put that into perspective by considering some issues that matter to Kiwis and how the Regulatory Standards Bill helps us avoid such mistakes. Earthquake regulations—recently repealed, and not a day too soon—have cost Kiwis billions. Saving $8.2 billion is what will occur when we remove these earthquake standards. Too many people have suffered and had their livelihoods taken away because a Parliament and a group of politicians decided that being seen to do the right thing at a moment in time was more important than the underlying rights of New Zealanders. The warnings were there—I voted against that legislation myself—but nobody took the warnings seriously enough, and it was only nine years and billions of dollars later that we are able to start putting those valuable resources into things like car crashes and cancers that, sadly, kill so many more Kiwis.

I want to touch on one change that’s been made to one of the principles of good regulation that has been particularly topical: the takings principle. That principle provides that “legislation should not take or impair property without the consent of the owner unless there is good justification and fair compensation is provided.” The inclusion of “impairment” is essential to the intent of the bill, which is to focus attention on the impact of legislation on existing interests and liberties as well as good lawmaking processes. When the Government is considering passing legislation that impairs property rights, the nature and extent of that impairment should be made clear, and relief should be considered. However, the committee’s change clarifies that the principle is intended to address situations where there is a high degree of impairment, not simply any impairment. Therefore, a reference to “severe impairment” has been added, which means the principle will not be engaged when there is not a severe level of impairment.

The bill does not require any action to be taken or compensation to be paid; the responsible Minister can provide a statement of reasons why they consider a severe impairment to be justified, and, if not paying compensation, the reasons for that position. However, the point is that this principle will make it easier for Parliament and the public to see where property rights are being severely impaired, with the intent of helping to reduce instances where impaired property rights without compensation lead to New Zealanders being so much poorer. I look forward to the committee of the whole House stage, when we can talk about the specifics of this bill in further detail. Overall, I’m proud to be responsible for a piece of legislation that is going to bring discipline and transparency to New Zealand’s lawmaking processes.

This bill, when enforced, is going to support the people of New Zealand by ensuring them that serious consideration is being given to legislation that impacts on their lives and livelihoods. If we’re asking New Zealanders to comply with regulations in everyday life, then it’s only reasonable to ensure that they’re clear, consistent, and meet a certain standard. When they do not meet that standard, the public rightfully expects lawmakers to be transparent about that fact. The passing of the Regulatory Standards Bill in later stages will take us a step closer to a more principled, transparent, and accountable process for making legislation in New Zealand. It will help build confidence in the legislative process, support better outcomes for New Zealanders, and ensure that our regulatory system is fit for purpose in the 21st century.

I’ve been very interested to see how easily people have mischaracterised this bill in the debate that has ensued, and I would like to touch on two changes, or two objections, that I think are misguided. One has been the repeated assertion that, somehow, the Regulatory Standards Bill imposes restrictions on Parliament and, therefore, is undemocratic. The law is crystal clear; it’s there in black and white. The purpose of this law is to promote accountability and transparency to the Parliament by the executive. This enables our democracy; it enables greater transparency.

Building on that misconception has been another widely shared in the public domain that, somehow, the principles are inadequate because they don’t include all of the objectives that the Government might have. A Government might wish to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi; it might wish to pursue goals around equity or public health or environmental protection. The fact that those are not included as principles reflects the fact that every initiative brought to this House and every regulation made by a Government is already assumed to have a public purpose. It is already assumed to have a purpose like one of the ones that I listed. The purpose of this bill is to enable and make transparent the Government of the day, to be able to show the public, and for the public to be able to see, where that collective purpose and the pursuit of it is impairing the rights of ordinary people. It’s not a surprise that it doesn’t include collective goals; the purpose of the law is to show when ordinary people’s rights are being impaired.

I’d like to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its very efficient consideration of the bill. I would like to also acknowledge the changes that they have made to the Regulatory Standards Board, in my view, strengthening the bill by enhancing its independence and by saying that it will be reinforced by the Governor-General rather than the Minister for Regulation. I believe that that is going to make the Regulatory Standards Board a much more august body with more authority, and it will allow that board to further raise the quality of the consistency accountability statements. Without further ado, I thank everybody for listening, and I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia orana e te Mana Whakawā. Well, here we have it: a bill that 0.7 percent of submitters supported. Here, it is hard to find a bill which fewer people are in favour of, but this National Government is the lapdog of the ACT Party in this instance: sitting there and doing the ACT Party’s bidding. The real irony of that speech by David Seymour is that this bill is one of the worst in terms of regulatory quality that I have ever seen.

Do you know who said that? The Ministry for Regulation and the Ministry of Justice in the regulatory impact statement. They said this bill has been poorly consulted on; it hasn’t got a problem that it needs to address; even if there was one, it’s the wrong solution; and the Minister won’t let us do our job and explore other options. That is how you make bad law, and that is what we’ve got here.

One thing that struck me about the submissions process was the long list of submitters who came in and gave really thoughtful submissions. Not people from particular perspectives, but NGOs, even Government organisations, came in and said this is a bad idea. You know who looks after our legislative quality at the moment? The Legislation Design and Advisory Committee. Excellent body, thoughtful people; hate politics. They said, “[these] principles are novel and deeply contestable”—in other words, this is not a straightforward bill; this is a politically charged, ideological bill.

What did the New Zealand Law Society say? “It is striking that the process and content of a Bill purporting to promote good law-making and high-quality legislation should fail to meet not only the Bill’s own standards, but the existing established processes for supporting good law-making.” So it’s a bad bill. The New Zealand Human Rights Commission, our independent human rights body: “The Bill embeds a narrow set of principles that prioritise individual and private interests as paramount considerations in lawmaking, effectively sidelining wider considerations of collective wellbeing”. The Human Rights Commission hates this bill.

Then you’ve got a whole lot of regional councils. The Greater Wellington Regional Council: this bill “Will impact on local government, creating legal risks, inefficiency, complexity and increased costs”. Does that sound like good law to you? I picked those quotes because they are not politically aligned. They haven’t got an axe to grind. They are thoughtful people who explained why this bill is bad law.

Of course, David Seymour says, “Here’s my list of regulatory principles, but don’t worry, you can have other things in there. You know, just because I haven’t mentioned Te Tiriti o Waitangi doesn’t mean it’s not in there.” That is rubbish, because what this bill does is it highlights what, in his view, are the most important principles. At the top of that hierarchy are private property rights.

This bill is seeking to entrench, by the back door, private property rights as a constitutional principle. In fact, the chief economist of his own Ministry for Regulation wrote a paper saying that private property rights are the most important human right not currently in our law, so we can see where it’s coming from. These principles are totally selective. Private property is not a guiding light for good legislation and regulation.

The fact of the matter is that equal treatment—the second principle, stating that everyone should be treated equally—is shorthand for the status quo. It’s shorthand for saying, “Take the existing inequalities in our society and don’t seek to address them.” It’s saying, “Where wealth has accumulated, leave it there.”

Well, on this side of the House, we believe in equity. We believe in addressing the inequities which are troubling our society. Of course, not only is it silent on the Treaty, it’s silent on all kinds of other key principles. All of our international obligations—nowhere in that bill does it say we should adhere to the promises we as a nation have made in the international community, whether they be around human rights or whether they be around defence and trade.

Human rights; what does it say about gender? What does it say about disability? What does it say about race? It says absolutely nothing.

Cameron Luxton: We’re not debating human rights.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: No—well, the ACT Party doesn’t want to debate human rights. The ACT Party is not interested in human rights; the ACT Party is interested in property rights.

This bill is constitutionally significant. It is about how law is made. Now, the fact of the matter is that for a constitutional bill, the process has been shocking. A constitutional bill should be careful, thoughtful, and, ideally, engaging on a cross-party basis. This has been anything but. This bill is seeking to entrench property rights into our lawmaking process by stealth and at speed. It basically promotes private property interests over collective benefits.

Fundamentally, this is about looking after corporate interests, because if we think about all of those rules there, all of those impairment rules, if we try to protect our communities, if we try to reduce the use of vapes, or if we try to limit alcohol advertising, all of these are impairments. Now, David Seymour would say, “Well, you can do it; you just have to say why.”, but we know that putting sand in the gears of legislation makes things less likely to happen, and that’s what he wants to do. He wants to tilt the playing field in favour of corporate interests.

Look, even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment came along—not known as a great supporter of the left, but he came along—and he had a lot to say. The most important thing he had to say is this: this bill puts the environment at risk, because nowhere does the environment feature. When your bureaucrats are doing their bureaucratic job, and all of this new blue tape and yellow tape that David Seymour’s creating—as they’re running through their checklist, where does it say, “How does this impact climate change?” “How does this impact biodiversity?” “How does this impact sustainability?”? It doesn’t say it anywhere, because at the heart of it, this bill is putting property and private interests over community environment and sustainability.

The bill, also, is just a failure. It’s an absolute procedural and regulatory failure. As I’ve said, it failed its own regulatory impact statement. The very thing it says we should do, which is check a bill for good process, that was examined, and they said it didn’t meet good process. Probably the most important thing, if we have an issue with regulatory quality in New Zealand, the question is: what’s the best way to fix it? The short answer, by everyone who was asked the question, is: not this. We have a whole lot of rules out there already, a whole lot of bodies—the Attorney-General, the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee, the Regulations Review Committee, every select committee, and the list goes on, of quality checks that exist for legislation which aren’t engaged in sufficiently already, largely because this Government ignores them and rides roughshod over them.

This year, we had a situation where the scope of the question was limited. David Seymour, against all his own advice, came into this with a closed mind, poor problem definition, and a solution that was in place before the problem was identified.

But here’s the other thing: this bill will cost a fortune. Not only will he have to set up his Regulatory Standards Board—his a little pet board—at a cost of probably $2 million or $3 million but every ministry will have to follow his new yellow tape; all of his rules he’s put in place. How much will that cost? Well, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said that department alone will have to spend 15 percent of its time following David Seymour’s little rules at a cost of $60 million—$60 million.

Hon Member: Oh, rubbish.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: You can rubbish it, David Seymour, but you’ve seen the report, and you know it. It’s a total waste of money.

The second thing, or the final thing, is this: this bill puts into the hands of the Regulatory Standards Board the job of questioning what we do here. That’s their job: second-guessing Parliament—and for a party that talks about parliamentary sovereignty, that lies ill in your mouth.

The bill is a waste of money, it doesn’t meet its own standards, it’s narrow, it’s contested, and it’s a constitutional change by self. We will oppose this bill to the end.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I guess at the end of the day, the real question for this House is precisely who asked for this piece of legislation. It wasn’t health experts, it wasn’t the legal profession, and it definitely wasn’t former Prime Ministers and those who have led former political parties. It wasn’t regular New Zealanders; in fact, regular New Zealanders decided to overwhelmingly oppose this piece of legislation.

If we just boil it down to the two main threads of arguments that were heard at the Finance and Expenditure Committee and have been well canvassed in the media landscape over the last few months as this Minister for Regulation has decided to push this legislation, through despite the overwhelming opposition, on the one side, we’ve heard that it’s largely redundant, that it is going to be duplicative, and, as indeed, Dr Duncan Webb alluded to, it’ll be expensive. Then on the other side of the debate, at the most egregious end, we hear very clearly that what this legislation does is provide a framework for multinational corporations to be compensated by the people of this country when this Parliament decides to curtail their supposed right to destroy our shared environment, our climate, or to incur on our human rights.

I think, again, one of those foundational questions—we hear a heck of a lot from the libertarian or the supposed libertarian party in this place is about special treatment for certain demographics in our country—we have to ask ourselves is: who, really, is getting special treatment in this country? Frequently, we hear the Minister in charge of this legislation say that it is precisely the same communities and demographics who are disproportionately overrepresented in every single negative statistic in our society. We then don’t hear next to anything about the corporations who are exploiting both people and planet; in fact, they seek to pass this legislation which makes it easier for them to do precisely that exploitation.

I find it quite fascinating that we are indeed having this debate about how a law is made; this law being the constraints of the rules of how we are supposed to progress with making legislation into the future. We have a situation where the Minister couldn’t follow his own rules. He wants to talk about good lawmaking, yet he couldn’t even uphold the processes of good lawmaking.

Today, the Minister of Education is removing Te Tiriti obligations from schools and saying that it is the Crown’s obligation to uphold those obligations, yet we have represented in this very piece of legislation the removal and the de-prioritisation of Te Tiriti as a principle that is to be considered in good lawmaking practices. Which leads us to the statement from the Waitangi Tribunal, and here I quote from their urgent inquiry report none the less, that the Crown accepted that its policy development for the bill occurred without targeted engagement for Māori. The tribunal found that this was in violation of the Crown’s obligation to consult with Māori in good faith and therefore violated Treaty principles of partnership and active protection.

Further, we hear from the likes of the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee, who submitted on the first round of the design of this legislation—which I might add had approximately 25,000 submissions, which again were overwhelmingly opposed to this legislation. They said, at that point in time, that they had, “misgivings about the capacity of this bill to offer improvements” because they see risks with the proposals, including the risk of significant unintended consequences. They then went into three key prongs: the bill is unnecessary to the extent that it restates existing constraints in the principles of good lawmaking. Secondly, the principles contained in the bill are selective and deeply contestable. Thirdly, the bill has the potential for significant constitutional impact that has not been fully explored.

If we are to take the Minister’s arguments in good faith, at just that surface level and to ignore all of the behaviour and everything else that he has said about our many communities across this country, if we are to believe that the aim here is to make good law, then surely there should have been a good lawmaking process to produce this very law which would have brought the people of this country along for that process. Instead, what we have ended up with is something whereby, as the Minister would say, it’s the people who are wrong; it’s his own officials who are wrong. It’s the legal experts who are wrong, the environmental experts, the health experts, former Prime Ministers, and the overwhelming majority of regular New Zealanders who used their time to oppose this legislation—99 percent of them—only to be ignored yet again by this Government.

Then we have the impartial Law Society who says, and I quote, “As well as being the product of inadequate consultation, the content of the Bill itself runs contrary to established precepts of legislative design in various important respects. It is striking that the process and the content of the Bill purporting to promote good law-making and high-quality legislation should fail to meet not only the Bill’s own standards, but the existing established processes for supporting good law-making.”

Then we hear about the red tape—the red tape. Well, let’s just talk for a minute about the yellow tape which the Minister’s own ministry advised him he would be creating with this very piece of legislation. Firstly, the creation of the Regulatory Standards Board, which we’ve just heard will cost in excess of approximately $3 million of taxpayers’ dollars per year. Then there are the new compliance costs with the requirements for each ministry and agency and department to create a consistency accountability statement. Then thirdly, at the conservative estimate of $60 million per year, the requirements to review existing legislation.

Again, I’d make the core point that if the Government genuinely wanted to engage on the point of how we make good law and improve our constitutional arrangements in this country, we’re game. We’d be totally down for that, because, in fact, I think that it would be great if we could have some form of agreement about the values and the principles that guide this country. But what we instead, unfortunately, have represented here is a pet vanity project from one guy in one political party that has sought to pass this legislation three times and failed, until it met such a poor negotiator as our current Prime Minister.

On those foundational values, well, I hold the very earnest, and perhaps some on the Government side might say naïve, view that New Zealanders actually care about each other and the planet that we live on. But those principles, well, they’re nowhere to be seen as far as the design of this legislation. Again, we would make the point that if the Government wanted to actually meaningfully engage on how we could go about creating these better processes, the Greens absolutely would have been the first ones sitting around the table. Unfortunately, what we have here is the entrenchment of special rights for those who currently own things.

As we well canvassed in question time today, this Government cares not a whisker for addressing inequality—inequality which is compounding under intentional Government decisions that have been made to push more children into poverty, to make more people homeless, to increase our climate changing emissions, and in turn the cost of living for New Zealanders, whilst also making it more difficult for our farmers to farm; guess what! They’re the ones hit first and worst by climate change. If we wanted legislation that actually addressed these issues, we could be debating that here in the Chamber today, but instead, we unfortunately have this petty, petty vanity project.

I’d just make the other point that you kind of can’t have it both ways. On one side of things, the Government is saying, “Don’t worry. Nothing to see here. This is kind of just business as usual. This aligns with stuff that’s kind of already happening and in train.” But then on the other side, we’ve got a Minister professing that this is a bit of a foundational shift in our constitutional arrangement. Again, I think I tend to believe the latter, because what we’ve seen from our Prime Minister is an inability to grasp the detail of the things that he has negotiated and put our country on the line for, in order to cobble together this coalition Government.

I just make, in my final 30 seconds, an appeal to the New Zealand First Party. Will the New Zealand First Party please stand up? Here is an opportunity to truly put New Zealand first. One of our Amendment Papers which will be tabled at the committee of the whole House stage will be to stop non-citizens from taking complaints and seeking compensation from the Regulatory Standards Board and we look forward to New Zealand First supporting New Zealand first. We oppose this bill.

The Regulatory Standards Bill gives effect to National’s coalition agreement with ACT. As chair of the relatively collegial Finance and Expenditure Committee, we also undertook extensive consultation on these matters. We heard approximately 30 hours of oral evidence and received over 159,000 written submissions. Of course, this follows last year’s departmental consultation which attracted 23,000 submissions. FEC—the Finance and Expenditure Committee—canvassed a range of views and took a relatively liberal and cross-party approach as to who we would hear from and its acceptance of submissions. Following many submitters’ feedback, key amendments to this bill have seen a best-practice tightening of the board and chair’s independence and separation from the Minister and Government of the day, consistent with the provisions within the Crown Entities Act. I want to congratulate the ACT Party on what has been over 20 years of advocacy and hard work. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Regulatory Standards Bill second reading. New Zealand First supports this bill because it promotes open and accountable Government that legislates with key principles in mind: the rule of law, efficiency and regulation, property rights, an independent judiciary, and a belief that every New Zealander is created equal before the law.

The bill upholds equality before the law, it promotes openness and accountability in Government, and it ensures that property holders cannot be dispossessed of their property without fair compensation, and cost-benefit analysis of legislation ensures that economic policies that will impede productivity and growth are adequately scrutinised. For these reasons, New Zealand First commends the bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

E te iwi, the Treaty principles bill tried to change the meaning and the intent of Te Tiriti o Waitangi; the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) erases Te Tiriti entirely from Aotearoa’s democracy, without even mentioning it. This bill creates a world of minimal-to-no rules in order to ensure the profitability of all things; “all things” means at the expense of our people, our oranga, our labour, our whenua, our moana. The bill circumvents the rights you already have, by treating those rights as rules which the Government can consider inefficient and unprofitable. E kī, e kī.

[What a cheek.]

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the first and the last line of defence against corporate exploitation in Aotearoa. This bill and the sham select committee process to ram it through the House is proof that true democracy doesn’t exist in this country. This is what the Treaty principles bill, the takutai moana amendment Act, and the removal of Treaty clauses from legislation are really about: dismantling our collective rights to allow the Atlas Network - backed foreign companies to plunder lands, water, and resources. It creates an anti - Waitangi Tribunal, giving David Seymour’s unelected mates the power to review every single law that addresses systemic inequality.

Make no mistake, e hika mā, the Treaty principles bill was a distraction. Chris Luxon’s donors only allowed him to vote against it because they knew this bill was coming next. The Regulatory Standards Bill is a direct assault on the constitutional foundations that protect all New Zealanders from exploitation.

For te iwi Māori, this looks like “Your rights are now rules.” that the Government can deregulate as they see fit, especially when these rights are held collectively—for example, as a part of the common public good, or as hapū and iwi. These rights create costs that the Government, under the Regulatory Standards Bill, can deem to be unnecessary. Our people know this and this is why 98.7 percent of New Zealanders oppose the Regulatory Standards Bill, and yet not a single recommendation provided by the people was adopted. Te Pāti Māori stand with the majority of the 156,000-plus people who made submissions against the bill because they knew what this bill means for Aotearoa.

For our remote and rural communities, this bill means the emergency services and authorities can make decisions about who and where to help in a crisis, based on efficiency rather than need—because it’s more expensive to help everybody—and this looks like our more marginalised rural communities being left behind.

For our community kai gatherers and whānau who rely on the moana as a kāpata, the bill would enable the Government to smash our fisheries even further. For example, a rule about putting cameras on boats to monitor fisheries and illegal dumping can be argued as being inefficient because it is an unnecessary cost, with no regard for our moana or our people, who depend on it.

What this means for our kaumātua is that this bill would enable Governments to raise the age of eligibility for our nannies and koros to access their super, or to significantly alter the scheme completely. For our learning support kaimahi and their tauira, this bill would allow the Government to justify reducing Māori curriculum content that would require expertise and new staff to deliver it—an additional cost that they would be able to label as inefficient purely due to the expense rather than need. The cost of education should not cost our mokopuna the ability to be supported in our education system.

For our whānau rangatahi on social welfare, right now, the Government is moving debt off its own balance sheet and placing the debt as an obligation on our parents, even though rangatahi are entitled to these provisions as citizens of the State. These decisions were made without the RSB even being in place, and yet, under the RSB, the situation could become the enforced norm.

For our country dealing with the cost of living crisis, without rules the supermarkets will not bring the prices of food down by themselves. Their first priority is making money for their owners—which fits the purpose of the RSB—not ensuring that people have access to kai.

I want to mihi to the 156,879 people who made powerful submissions in the resistance to this racist bill, the multitudes of people who donate their time, their expertise, and their aroha to fighting for the kaupapa, only to be ignored. This Government won’t listen to you, but Te Pāti Māori have heard you. We will get rid of this Government in 2026, and the Regulatory Standards Bill along with it. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in anger to denounce the Regulatory Standards Bill. I would describe this bill as a wet fart of a dying Government that’s run out of ideas, that’s incompetent of doing what everyday New Zealanders want.

At a time when our economy is at a record low and our unemployment is at a record high, at a time when a measles outbreak is rising out of control, and property damage from a climate-exacerbated natural disaster is still being repaired all around the country, you would think that this Government would be focused on that and the real issues. But, no, they’ve put this at the top of the Order Paper. Why? Because, fundamentally, they’re a distracted, out-of-touch, ideological Government that’s focused more on their imported culture wars and their pet projects than serving the needs of ordinary New Zealanders.

There’s been a number of super-heated, inflated claims about this bill from the other side. The first claim that’s been made by the proponents of it—and, by the way, we’ve seen speeches from the opposite benches. We’ve had Mr Seymour not even give the full speech—eight minutes—we’ve had a one-minute speech from Mr Brewer over there, and we’ve had a one-minute speech from Ms Costello over here, because, fundamentally, they know that this bill is actually indefensible. They know that this bill can’t be defended, because it’s got no real substance to it.

They say that it’s about better regulation, but better regulation for who? It’s certainly not for the people, if you listen to the submissions of all the number of people who have submitted against it—98.7 percent opposed—it’s certainly not for the planet, if you listen to the submissions of experts, like the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and groups that care about the environment, like 350 Aotearoa, Forest & Bird, and Greenpeace; and it’s certainly not for Te Tiriti, if you listen to the expert submission by the Waitangi Tribunal on why this bill is so bad.

We’ve heard claims that this bill will cut red tape and actually introduce a new era of prosperity where there’ll be fun for all and a new level of economic activity, but if you actually listen to what the Government’s own advisers have to say about this, they’ve said the opposite. They’ve said that creating a regulatory environment which is subject to chop and change, like this bill will do—because we will chop and change this bill up next term—is actually the opposite of how you create a stable environment for good investment in economic growth.

This bill will cost a minimum of $60 million, and actually a lot more if you consider all the costs that’s being spent on the Ministry for Regulation. Rather than cutting red tape, this bill actually creates the opposite of it. It creates a tsunami of yellow tape that will strangle the Public Service and that will create distractions from core work. So much for a Government that claims to care about economic efficiency, when the bill will do the opposite with their consistency assessment standards.

Finally, this bill makes claims about good lawmaking. As we’ve heard from my colleagues Chlöe Swarbrick and the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, this bill has actually followed the opposite of the process of good lawmaking. From the abuse of urgency that this Government has undertaken in various legislation such as the pay equity bill, to cutting off the number of oral submissions, this bill actually gives the opposite of how you would do good lawmaking in this country.

We’ve heard this bill denounced as an ACT Party bill, but the reality is that while David Seymour might have created the legislation—and the legislation is the gun—the reality is that Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon loaded the bullets with their complicity in allowing this legislation to pass.

Now, what would the Green Party do instead? Well, we actually care about genuinely good legislation, and so the first step would be to repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill and to end the tsunami of yellow tape that this bill will create. The second is that we will abolish the Ministry for Regulation and end the libertarian industrial bureaucracy complex that this Government has entrenched in their current lawmaking. We will end the shoddiness of poor decision-making and the number of abuses of urgency that this bill has created.

I want to spend the next 15 seconds thanking the submitters who have helped to create amendments to this bill, and all of the people who have taken part in this process. This Government has not and will not listen to you, but we have, and together we will make this a one-term Government.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The object of the Regulatory Standards Bill is to increase transparency in regulation and the resulting accountability with the New Zealand public. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Regulatory Standards Bill. It is, somewhat, déjà vu for me because, whilst I haven’t been involved in the select committee process on this bill, last term, we had a member’s bill in the name of David Seymour, and it was very similar to this. I was able to speak on that bill when, of course, we voted it down. That is what we will do when we have the opportunity. This bill will be repealed. This bill is vain. This bill is ideological in a very negative way. I say that despite what the introduction on the select committee report-back says. I will read that to you. The first sentence is: “This bill seeks to support the executive’s accountability to Parliament.” I have to say, that sounds like a wonderful and glorious ambition.

As somebody who is part of Parliament but not part of the executive—the executive being the Ministers; there’s not many of them in the House at the moment—most of us are members of Parliament; we are not members of the executive. We hear, over and over again, that Parliament, this Parliament of all of us, the executive members and the non-executive members, is sovereign. We can make the laws, but what actually happens is that an executive can have so much power that they make sure that all of their members—all of their non-executive members that are part of Parliament—just go along with them and don’t do any scrutiny. That is a real problem if Parliament changes as drastically as it has this term.

This term of Government has seen an egregious use of all-stages urgency and giant amendments coming in at the committee stage, with no recourse for the non-executive Opposition members to scrutinise that, to ask experts about what the changes might mean. I hear often from the other side: “In the last term of Parliament, there was lots of urgency used.” There’s a big difference between all-stages urgency and using urgency for different parts of a bill because you require more House time. Those two things are very different. There is also a huge difference when a bill is passed under urgency because there is something like an emergency—that is a good use of urgency—and when there are pieces of legislation passed that have post-enactment review provisions so Parliament can accept that it does need to do this thing quickly because, say, we had some space legislation earlier this year where there might be a national security interest. That is a good reason to pass something under urgency. But then, you have a post-enactment review placed so that the parliamentarians have an opportunity to scrutinise that legislation; this Government does none of those things.

It is quite ironic that we have this bill here and that the introduction from the select committee starts with the sentence that this is about changing the dynamic, moving away from executive powers to parliamentarian powers. That is not what this bill is doing at all. We heard the Minister say something about mojo—which we hear a lot from that Government; that’s all they seem to like to talk about—and then he said pieces of legislation need to be justified against some criteria. That sounds reasonable, but, of course, the criteria are David Seymour’s criteria; they are not Rachel Brooking’s criteria, and they are not many other people’s criteria.

I am amazed that both National and New Zealand First seem to have been so bamboozled by this that they have laid down and agreed to David Seymour’s libertarian criteria to be used in an expensive process that will cost us all time and money and not result in better lawmaking and not, importantly, result in more power of the Parliament over the executive. We have his criteria—and he described in his speech—that they were just rights of ordinary people and that they were, of course, not collective rights. And so, as I said before, these are not the Rachel Brooking rights. If they were Rachel Brooking rights, they would include ones about our Treaty arrangements—of course, one of our most important constitutional documents—but, no, they’re not there. They would, of course, include something about the environment and, maybe, the principle of polluter pays—that’s something that should appeal to libertarians—but, no, that’s not in this bill either.

We’ve heard from Dr Duncan Webb that this was a solution looking for a problem and that there have been many submissions about this question. If you do want to actually do what this first sentence says—to support the executive’s accountability to Parliament—what might you do? In 2019, before I was in Parliament, the Legislation Act 2019 was passed. This Act has a Part 4, yet this Part 4 is still not in force. I just want to quickly read the purpose of Part 4 of that piece of legislation, “Disclosure requirements for Government-initiated legislation”. Section 101 states: “The Purpose of this Part—is to (a) better inform parliamentary and public scrutiny of Government-initiated legislation; and (b) promote good administrative practices for the development of such legislation.”

That sounds to me like a very fine ambition, one that appears to mirror what has been said about this version of the Regulatory Standards Bill. Yet I have not seen the Minister or any proponent of this bill explain why it is that they don’t just bring into force Part 4 of the Legislation Act 2019. Of course, we already have in existence the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee. We heard mention of them before, again from the contribution from Dr Duncan Webb. This committee are, and I say this with admiration, some truly independent law nerds, and they look at the legislation—they don’t look at the policy; they look at the legislation—and say whether or not it will work and how it could be improved. So they already exist. Again, why are they not mentioned?

I want to conclude by being very clear that the executive’s accountability to Parliament should be strengthened, and there are some ways to do that. One of the ways is to bring in Part 4 of that Legislation Act 2019 that I just read out. One of the ways could be bolstering the role of that Legislative Design and Advisory Committee. This is something that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment submitted on. Another one would be not to be using all-stages urgency for bills that have nothing to do with emergencies or any sort of national security, because all-stages urgency means that when the ACT Minister comes in with a pay equity bill, we don’t see it until she stands up and starts speaking on it, we go to the table and pick up that bill, and then we go through all the stages of that legislation at once. That is a disgraceful and stupid way to make legislation, whatever you think of the policy. We will repeal this bill. It is a terrible bill.

For the members’ benefit, I just want to highlight the purpose of this bill, which is to hold power to account and to raise the standard of lawmaking and policy making in this country. I think we’ve all got great examples from across the House of poor policy that we’ve seen, and the purpose of this bill is to strengthen that. That’s why this bill sets out standard principles for good regulation. It sets out a process that it needs to go through and sets out a regulatory standards board to provide a way for Kiwis to have their say on bad and poor regulation, and it ensures that Ministers and agencies take their obligations seriously.

As a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, it was good to hear those that came before us. I wish to thank those submitters. We did make some changes to this bill, and I look forward to debating those throughout the stages.

I wish to clear up some mistruths about this bill that have been fed from the other side. The first is that this takes away the sovereignty of Parliament. It does not take away the sovereignty of Parliament. There’s nothing in this bill that prevents us from passing legislation. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

I normally have a lot of respect for Mr Bidois on matters relating to this particular bill and other bills that we’ve debated in this House, but Mr Bidois, in his speech to the House this afternoon, made it very clear he didn’t listen to the vast majority of submitters who opposed this bill. Making good legislation in this House is about making legislation for the people. How is it that over 98 percent of those who submitted on this bill opposed this bill, and yet the Government continues to push on with its legislation agenda, of which the Regulatory Standards Bill is one?

Every bill in this House has a whakapapa—it has a history—and it’s easy to start at the Treaty principles bill, but I won’t do that. For context, the history of this bill started in the negotiations between the National Party and the ACT Party, where the National Party and the ACT Party in their coalition agreement came up with the Regulatory Standards Bill. Now, I could go back a little bit further, to past iterations of the ACT Party in Government where they tried to do a very similar thing. It still got the cut then, and yet this ACT Party continues with it to this day.

The National-led Government under Christopher Luxon negotiated, in their negotiations for the coalition, to have this bill come into the House. Now, how is it, then, that on that side of the House, they can stand there, hand on heart, and say, “We are making legislation for the people.”, when the people clearly do not agree with it?

Moving on to the heritage of this bill, the perennial beat-down on Māori in this country has been nothing but absolutely revolting from this Government from the time that they took office in 2023, and, yes, it did start with the Treaty principles bill. When they say, on that side of the House, “We’re here for efficiencies to make Government work better.”, well, they tried to push through a bill that wasted taxpayers’ dollars on a process that was never ever going to get across the line, yet we had to suffer the division forced on our communities, and we continue to do so with this particular bill.

Now, if the Minister today had stood up and said, “I heard all of the great suggestions from those who made submissions on this bill and we’ve incorporated some of those into the next iteration of this bill, in its second reading.”, well, we might have listened a little bit more. But, in reading the legislative statement today, what we see here is not only are there minor amendments, one of them actually continues to rub the salt in the wounds of Māori, who have only just recently suffered under the passing of the marine and coastal area (MACA) legislation in this House.

The legislative statement quite clearly says here that “A clarification has been made to provide a consistent approach to excluding legislation that gives effect to customary marine title under the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011”. Well, why don’t you rub it in? Why don’t you rub the salt in the wound, when this House has already gone and done that and made it even harder for anyone to try and seek customary title under the MACA legislation?

Now, we have a reminder here, in the second reading of this bill, in the Minister’s legislative statement, where he, in an attempt to try and assuage the voter out there, has said, “Oh well, we’ve excluded those who have already been recognised under the MACA.” Well, I’d ask this House: how many of those who have sought customary title have been recognised under MACA? No, people across this House probably don’t know the answer, but I can tell you that I’m aware of only one, and that is the settlement that was reached with Ngati Porou.

There’s another attempt by this Minister and this particular bill to say, “There’s nothing to see here. We still want to respect individual property rights.”, but that, actually, is not what’s happening here. We know that what this Government has done, with the way that they’ve passed their bills, that it is a challenge to the democratic processes of this House. How many times have members in this House sat on select committees where the process has been truncated in this term? Far too many—in fact, more than I’ve experienced in the three terms prior to this term.

Hon Rachel Brooking: That’s if it goes to select committee.

Hon PEENI HENARE: That’s how many, and my colleague here made the very good point that when you rush things under urgency, nobody gets to see the bill. Members don’t even get to see the bill until it’s tabled in the House. Well, if we don’t get to see it, that means the people of this country don’t get to see it, and that side of the House wants to talk to us about good lawmaking? They want to talk to us about good democratic processes?

Well, this is another affront to the democratic processes of this House and the ones that I know New Zealanders believe in, right up and down this country. We will repeal this legislation when we get the opportunity, and we do not support it.

Look, red tape and regulation has been holding this country back for far too long; much of it introduced under that previous Government. We need to get rid of the unnecessary red tape holding our farmers and our growers, our primary sector, our horticulture sector back. We need to get the wheels moving. We need transparent regulation, smarter regulation, and less regulation so that we can strengthen this economy and lift wages for everyone. I commend this bill to the House.

The introduction of this bill tells us that the “bill seeks to support the Executive’s accountability to Parliament for developing high-quality legislation and exercising stewardship over regulatory systems.” This is the Government that we have seen over the last two years flout their responsibility as a Government to have proper scrutiny of the regulations that have been put in place.

We have had unprecedented numbers of bills coming to this House without regulatory impact statements. This is a Government that can’t even use the existing apparatus that exists to ensure that we are making good laws in this House. We’ve had member after member on the Government backbenches jumping up and defending laws that they have no idea about the impact of, because none of us in this House do, because this is a Government that has just blatantly disregarded its responsibility when it comes to oversight of our regulatory systems in this country.

Now, we are not supporting this bill; my colleagues have made that clear. In fact, the Labour Party has made this clear at every stage of this piece of legislation. It is a deeply flawed and ideologically driven bill. It is an example, yet again, of the tail wagging the dog. This is where David Seymour got one over Christopher Luxon in the coalition arrangements and shows, yet again, what weak leadership we have from our Prime Minister; what weak leadership we have from the National Party in terms of standing up for what is right and what is wrong. I feel sorry for the New Zealand First members. I suspect that they know that this is deeply flawed legislation but are being forced to vote for it because of their coalition arrangement.

Let’s go through and have a look at what this bill does. On the face of it, we see it sets out the principles about what we should be taking into account when we make law. It sets up a board that is appointed by David Seymour, and can be directed by David Seymour, to look into legislation. If we have a look at what this bill does, one of the things it does is it puts the primary of private interests over the collective interest at every point that it can.

Now, let’s consider what that could do. We had Transpower, for example, come and give a submission to the Finance and Expenditure Committee about clause 8(c) of the legislation that pointed out, because of this regulation, if in the national interest we need to upgrade our power grid—which we will, we will need to put more infrastructure into place—that because of what is laid out in this bill, New Zealanders will pay more for their power; that there will be a requirement, because of this legislation, for compensation to be paid.

Now, we see this in multiple ways. In fact, 98.7 percent of the people who came and submitted on this bill pointed out what problems there were with this legislation. I want to point out how wide the opposition was to this bill, how wide-ranging it was. We heard from the Law Society, we heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, we heard from iwi, we heard from groups that spanned a huge, broad span of New Zealand society how problematic this piece of law is in so many ways. We heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the way in which this legislation will impede our ability to make laws that protect our environment, to make laws that put in the necessary provisions we need to do to counter climate change. These were things that we had respected bodies, like the Parliamentary Commission for the Environment, come and give their submissions on.

We also heard from iwi, repeatedly, of the failure of this legislation to take into account the Treaty of Waitangi. This comes within a bundle of legislation that this Government have passed. Not only with the Treaty Principles Bill; we’ve had the marine and coastal area legislation that my colleague the Hon Peeni Henare just talked about, that this really is part of the trifecta from this Government of having a complete attack on Māori and Treaty rights in this country.

Now, under the shadow but trying to hide behind a fig leaf of good lawmaking, we have a Government that really is cutting to the heart of who we want to be as a country and what we want to be able to achieve with our legislation; that what we can see in terms of the rule of law, liberties, the taking of properties, taxes, fees and levies, the role of the courts, and good lawmaking—these might seem on the face of it very sensible provisions. We in no way are not saying that we should have proper transparency and oversight of the way in which we make law in this country, but we have a Government that can’t even use the existing apparatus. Time and time again, they’ve just bypassed the regulatory impact statement. They’ve brought legislation to this House that simply does not have that statement with it. The Cabinet hasn’t considered regulatory impact statements when they’re making decisions whether or not to progress legislation.

Focus on individual liberty: this obsession that the ACT Party have got into the Government’s agenda with this single focus on individual liberty does not recognise the duty that we have as lawmakers to protect a vast array of things for future generations. That it is our job as lawmakers: to make sure that we are thinking beyond just the individual rights of a single entity or a single person, and think about what we need to do to protect Aotearoa New Zealand and make sure that our children and our grandchildren can benefit from things. All of these things need to be considered when we are making laws.

When we look at the submissions that we heard, as I said, 98.7 percent of the submissions opposed it. That should give a Government pause for thought, the fact there was overwhelming opposition to this bill. We weren’t talking about just a small number of submissions. There were a very large number of submissions that came in. They went through an absolute range of things that could be put in place. One of the things, when we look at the taking of property principle that is in the legislation, it is unworkable. We heard this time and time again from those who came and submitted to the select committee, suggesting that a property right should not be impaired without fair compensation. This is what is in the legislation: where that impairment of property rights benefits one person but causes a detriment, the person who benefits should provide compensation.

One of the questions that we asked, and Government members on the committee refused to engage with, is: what about laws that we make in this country around healthy homes? What about where we say that, actually, people deserve the right to live in a home that does not make them sick; that as legislators we should have the ability to actually legislate to say there are minimum standards around the homes that we allow people to live in so that we don’t add to the health burden of this country and to the detriment of individual’s health.

What about swimming pool fences? Now, this will probably be something that will excite David Seymour a great deal—in terms of the reason why we have laws around we may do safety measures like this. This is in terms of the taking of property principle. These are where we are thinking about the collective benefit over that individual benefit. What about if a district plan would change to place height restrictions on a building to preserve the sunlight to a neighbouring building that would impair one landowner’s property rights for another’s benefit? That’s clearly unreasonable to expect the neighbour to compensate the owner of the restricted land. These are all the kinds of issues that were raised at select committee of why this bill is unworkable.

This is a piece of law that is simply the ACT Party flexing its muscle with a weak majority party within a coalition that has no ability to stand up for New Zealanders and is letting New Zealanders down. New Zealanders are being stuck with a piece of legislation that is to their detriment.

Excellent, I have the 12th spot in this debate, and we have heard a lot of hyperbole and a lot of rubbish in this debate. This bill is very clear: it aims to bring the same discipline to regulation that some argue we already accept and expect in our fiscal management. It aims to set clear principles for good regulation, and then requires Ministers and agencies to disclose and explain any inconsistencies. The board’s advice to Parliament is non-binding, contrary to what we’ve heard. It cannot strike down laws. Urgent or exceptional laws can still proceed, but departures must be transparent and justified. This is about transparency and holding the executive to account.

The question is that the amendments recommended by the Finance and Expenditure Committee by majority be agreed to.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Medicines Amendment Bill.