Finally got around to reading this Bill on the last day subs are open. Made these notes (on Bluesky, thinking out loud).
- It seems to be “if your legislation doesn’t match ACT-style libertarian principles, you need to admit it and wear a sign saying NOT LIBERTARIAN ENOUGH” which has various emergent consequences if embedded in a system.
- 8 (l) legislation should be the most effective, efficient, and proportionate response to the issue concerned that is available. Is *this bill* the most effective and efficient response to the (supposed) issue of poor-quality regulation? A new legal obligation and oversight board?
- Creating regulations is always about complex trade-offs on many dimensions. The Bill’s proposed principles are a narrow set of political priorities, not universal concerns, and as such using them as a universal measuring stick is farcical.
- Surely a future government would just immediately repeal this rather than repeatedly hold up a “not libertarian enough” sign? And if that’s the case, this whole Bill is a waste of effort, right? You can’t legislate norms
- The principles by which regulation might be judged are not, probably can’t be, settled. The Regulatory Standards Bill would force subsequent governments to pre-concede a particular political framework. It’s an attempt to win a political argument by legislating that you won.
- basically, (1) any set of principles is inherently political & contestable, this legislation reaches too far in declaring such a set; (2) where specific principles are widely agreed (e.g. role of courts), this Bill is an extremely heavy-handed way to increase conformity even if such is needed
After thinking about it on a dog walk and then later on another dog walk, I turned that into a submission, which is reproduced below. (Unmentioned in this sub is how disgusted I am by the antics of David Seymour online, encouraging his followers to jeer at people who have voiced opposition to the Bill. He is a grotesque hypocrite and a perpetual irritant.)
My submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill
The Regulatory Standards Bill is bad law. While acknowledging other submissions will raise many areas of concern, I will focus on two that stand out to me as sufficient reason not to progress this poorly-conceived bill into law.
1) The heart of the Bill is the set of Principles given in s8. As designed, the Bill demands all new regulations be tested against these principles, and a clear statement is required when there is an inconsistency.
This set of principles is not a generally accepted set of norms for responsible regulation. To the contrary, the principles contain political stances that are heavily contested within the NZ Parliament. 8(b) in particular is an example of such a political claim. The heavily contested nature of the construction within 8(b) is plainly evident in the response to this Bill, and in years of discussion and argument about how “liberty” should properly be represented in the laws that govern society.
By the same token, other Principles that might be widely held as important to responsible regulation by key constituencies, such as consideration of Te Tiriti or climate crisis, are entirely absent.
This Bill is an attempt to leapfrog political debate and embed a particular political position within the legislative process. This is improper, in that it treats an active debate as a settled one. It is antidemocratic, in that it attempts to legally privilege some perspectives over others. And finally, and most importantly, it is unwise, in that it will lead inevitably to this legislation either being repealed entirely, or becoming a repository for an endlessly revised set of principles that reflect the political goals of the government of the day.
This reason alone is enough to strike down this Bill now.
2) Secondly, the Bill proposes a legislative reportiing requirement from Ministers for all proposed new regulations, and then builds an elaborate further system complete with a newly constituted Board, in order to achieve its aims. Even on those principles that might be broadly held (e.g. 8(i) on the importance of consultation with those affected by law), the structure imposed by this Bill would be far in excess of what is demanded by the problem. Principle 8(l) says legislation should be the most effective, efficient, and proportionate response to the issue concerned that is available; this system is none of those things, but instead creates work for a fresh bureaucracy. Other avenues that are more effective, efficient, and proportionate exist: taking the pressure off the public service to do more, faster, with fewer people, for example. Policy makers in public service are highly skilled and highly principled but wildly overstretched, and dealing with that is surely the most obvious first step to address the problem claimed by this Bill.
This reason, too, is sufficient to strike down the Bill.
This Bill should not be progressed, as it is improper, antidemocratic, unwise, and unnecessary. It is badly conceived and would make bad law.