ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour. Photo: VNP/Phil Smith
Opponents of the Regulatory Standards Bill are saying it is unconstitutional, ignores Te Tiriti o Waitangi and will do the opposite of what it claims.
The bill is facing scrutiny at select committee this week, with about 30 hours of hearings packed into four days. ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour says it aims to improve lawmaking and regulation, but its critics - who make up the majority of submitters - argue it does the opposite.
None of the MPs who make up the committee actually showed up in person - all appearing via teleconferencing - so it was just submitters, media and staff from the clerk's office actually in the room on Monday morning.
Submitters were given five minutes for individuals and 10 minutes for groups, leaving little time for questions. Chair Ryan Hamilton said that was standard practice, but has received some pushback from some of the submitters.
Multiple submitters on Monday called the bill "constitutionally unsound". Māori lawyer and legal academic Ani Mikaere said it had nothing to do with its proclaimed objective of improving regulation, and "its true goal is to further embed neoliberalism".
She said it would create a default non-compliance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the Regulatory Standards Board it created would be "unqualified, unrepresentative, and unaccountable" - serving the interests of corporate elites.
She said ACT had gained disproportionate influence over the government, and National and New Zealand First lacked a backbone and were being completely upstaged and "reduced to the role of chorus line in the ACT pantomime".
She also targeted Seymour's claim made in an RNZ interview that bots were behind the overwhelming opposition in submissions, calling it a "frankly childish tirade" with no evidence to back it up.
Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer told the committee the bill was "the strangest piece of New Zealand legislation I have ever seen".
Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
"It is quite bizarre, and it will not work," he told MPs. "And the idea that anything good could come from it is idle."
Sir Geoffrey said the legislation would produce "a terrific amount of extra work" and hinder ministers' objectives, all based on an "unproven ideology" that the country was over-regulated.
Appearing for the Iwi Chairs Forum, Rahui Papa said the bill amounted to a "power grab for the few, a power grab that will support the old boys' network". He said the bill had intentionally sidelined Te Tiriti o Waitangi and was "all about money over manaakitanga".
He argued the bill would negatively affect environmental and social protections.
Natalie Coates spoke for the Māori law society Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa, and opposed it in its entirety, saying it should be "thrown in the bin, or at the very least gutted and completely rebuilt from scratch".
Natalie Coates. Photo: supplied
She said it was constitutionally unsound, flagrantly breached and ignored Te Tiriti o Waitangi, prioritised neoliberal values and economic liberty over collective wellbeing, and - if passed - would proceed despite significant public opposition and against official advice.
"That is not good lawmaking built with the whole country in mind. It is a minor party pushing their political waka against the tide, blind to the current beneath. Strengthening our regulatory system is of course a good aim, but the bill as currently framed doesn't do that and in fact would destabilise it - privileging some interests, sidelining others that have been longstanding legal tradition in Aotearoa."
People appearing in support of the bill were relatively few and far between by comparison. Seymour himself did not make a submission, but argued the bill was all about supporting better lawmaking and limiting the amount of poor regulation - ultimately saving the government, and therefore the taxpayer, money.
He said it forced the government to explain where it had breached principles of the bill, though critics said those principles were narrow and in support of a neoliberal viewpoint. Seymour argued opposition to the bill was just alarmism grounded in misinformation, and that its opponents did not really understand it.
The Dunedin City Council and Horizons Regional Council also outlined concerns that councils like them could be required to review bylaws and other rules that could be considered a kind of regulation - and could also be bound by requirements for compensation.
ACT's Mark Cameron asked Horizons chair Rachel Keedwell if the cost-benefit analyses proposed by the bill could actually improve councils' ability to push back on "bad law" that could ride roughshod over councils' powers.
She said the bill was not needed for that, and "all this bill is doing in its current form is adding another layer of bureaucracy - it's not going to help us in what we're doing".
Likewise, the Māori Women's welfare league was concerned about the requirements affecting organisations run by volunteers, including charities.
Transpower was concerned they could be required to compensate people whose homes or other properties were near power lines, and urged an exemption from the bill for the Electricity Act, and all existing infrastructure currently subject to protections under other laws, raising fears over "the potential for compensation under a whole lot of different pieces of legislation and regulation for what is essentially the same transmission line".
ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
Speaking to reporters at Parliament, Seymour said finding constructive criticism about the bill was like finding a needle in a haystack.
"This is a piece of legislation that will make it much much harder for politicians to just lazily put red tape on New Zealanders. It will make it much much easier for New Zealanders to challenge bad laws," he said.
He said the bill did little that was new, but instead put together some of the existing requirements around lawmaking "in one black-letter law so New Zealanders have some rights".
Challenged on why Te Tiriti requirements were excluded, Seymour argued the principles included in the bill were "designed around making sure that every New Zealander has a government that makes laws carefully and is accountable to them".
"If you can explain why putting in a principle of the Treaty in would enhance that I'd be interested to hear it," Seymour said.
"All these people sort of mindlessly say 'you must have the Treaty of Waitangi because it's our founding document', all of that is true but they're not really able to give a practical example of why making the Treaty a principle in this particular law would change the amount of red tape New Zealanders face, which is its purpose."
He said he would be willing to include a reference to the Treaty if someone could give a practical example of how doing so would improve an outcome "for all New Zealanders".
The suggestion the government could be forced to pay compensation due to legal action as a result of the bill had been "totally debunked", he said, because the bill stated no one would gain actionable legal rights as a result of the legislation.
Asked to respond to Sir Geoffrey's submission, Seymour said he has every right to his opinions.
"But frankly, if he thinks that it's too hard for the government to keep tabs on all the rules it's making, he should be worried about all the poor buggers out there that have to follow the government's rules," he said.
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