David Seymour. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
A look at what the Regulatory Standards Bill will do, and why there's no clear answer to the question of whether it will achieve its aims.
The Regulatory Standards Bill is in its fourth iteration.
There have been three previous attempts - and three failures - in getting a bill that aims to improve law making over the line.
But this time, the ACT party's baby is part of the coalition agreement, and David Seymour can see the finishing tape.
The bill has passed its first reading and will shortly hear submissions, but everything about its path has been controversial, including the short timeframe to hear those submissions.
The Detail talks to Newsroom political editor Laura Walters about what the bill aims to do, and why so many people hate it.
Critics include former Attorney-General and Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who really is an expert in writing laws, and who has reviewed a previous iteration of the bill when he was president of the Law Commission. He calls it "one of the oddest bills I've ever seen".
When asked what the new law will actually do, Walters says: "We don't know."
"I just don't know what the impact is going to be. I'm kind of constantly like... storm in a teacup? Or constitutional nightmare? It's kind of somewhere in the middle."
Some commentators - including another former Attorney-General Chris Finlayson - have said the bill is unnecessary. Others say it will not have a big impact because, like the Bill of Rights, it can be ignored by Parliament when forming legislation. Seymour's own regulation ministry and the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee have advised that it is not needed.
"Despite what people say, it is constitutionally important, this piece of legislation. People care deeply about this... this is going to impact our future and current laws," says Walters.
"It is hard to unpick, it is hard to interpret. But it's worth having the debate over."
Some of the sideshows around the bill have distracted from what it is about. They include a spat between Seymour and one of the country's top academics Dame Anne Salmond; Seymour's social media attacks on those who disagree with it; some "unparliamentary language" during Seymour's monologue at the Finance and Expenditure Committee; uproar over the mere 30 hours allocated to hearing submissions; and Seymour making comments that he later had to walk back about most of the submissions coming from bots.
Walters prefers to refer to this bill as the "good law-making bill", which is what Seymour has billed it as.
"It would essentially set up some foundational principles for what constitutes good law-making," she says.
"All past and all future laws would essentially be tested against these principles. So we kind of refer to them as a set of core principles. They are quite complex but the shortened version of these principles are - the rule of law; liberties; taking of property; taxes, fees and levies; the role of courts; and good law making.
"The idea, David Seymour says, is to ensure that all future laws are better; that legislation is of a good quality; that will ensure that poor laws aren't made, that we don't have issues with redundant or excessive legislation and regulation."
But "when we're talking about the principles of good law making... it's really hard, because those principles are so contested. The idea is that this law should make for better law-making, but everyone has to agree that this law is the right mechanism for it and has those principles right in the first place. And it seems New Zealand just cannot agree on that."
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