Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand Submission on the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill 

[Submission begins] 

The Green Party opposes the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill and recommends the Government abandon the Bill.

We know that New Zealanders value honouring te Tiriti, supporting and common good, and ensuring we protect our waters and natural spaces from damage and pollution.

While some bipartisan principles for law-making could improve the quality of legislation in Aotearoa, the Regulatory Standards Bill proposes ideological principles that are at odds with what New Zealanders value.

The principles which prioritise individual, private property rights are at odds with te Tiriti o Waitangi, a contract which the Government is legally required to uphold. It is also a framework which fails to protect collective goods we all care about, such as thriving taiao and clean freshwater.

Excluding widely accepted norms, such as compliance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is a major, and bizarre omission from regulatory principles in the Bill. The principles also fail to mention any kind of international obligations, such as the Paris Agreement, any Fair-Trade Agreements, or international conventions on human rights that we are signatories to.

This is because this Bill is not actually about good regulatory principles – it is about implementing ACT Party ideology.

Despite just 0.33% of the 22,000 submissions supporting the proposals for this Bill, there has been zero compromise on the principles and zero attempt to reconcile the views of New Zealanders with the views of the ACT Party.

The overall impact of this Bill will likely be a chilling effect on legislation designed to honour te Tiriti o Waitangi, protect the environment, or implement safeguards to protect workers from harm. The retrospective application of the Bill to require reviews of legislation will also take time and resources away from our public and community services – they'll waste time checking on whether existing rules and legislation complies with Act’s vision instead of serving communities. Meanwhile, Aotearoa faces significant challenges: the climate crisis, a $200bn infrastructure deficit, a biodiversity crisis and freshwater at breaking point.

A change in approach that would actually support good regulation-making is allowing the time and analysis required for this, instead of prescribing political solutions to problems that do not exist. Throughout this term, Regulatory Impact Assessments on Government policies routinely show that officials have been hamstrung by pre-determined ministerial preferences and have therefore not been able to assess other options, or they have not been given adequate time to undertake the level of analysis required for good decision-making, including time for stakeholder consultation.

We recommend the Government abandon this Bill and focus on what works to improve the quality of legislation: ending the abuse of urgency and following democratic process, allowing officials to undertake options analysis to solve problems instead of pre-determining outcomes, and listening to New Zealanders – such as the 88 percent of submitters who opposed this Bill at its first stage of consultation.

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Note: Submissions are now closed.