10 Jul 2025

Watch live: Submitters speak at Regulatory Standards Bill hearing day 4

3:45 pm on 10 July 2025

Māori and health representatives are making submissions at Thursday's Regulatory Standards Bill hearing.

The bill is up for its fourth day of hearings at select committee.

Toitū te Tiriti spokesperson Eru Kapa-Kingi told the committee the bill's title referring to regulation was misleading, because the substance of the bill would affect all legislation.

He said the bill would affect tangata whenua more severely, and the process the bill has followed had not been good lawmaking - despite that being the stated purpose.

Toitū te Tiriti was the group which led protests against the Treaty Principles Bill last year, and Kapa-Kingi said the Regulatory Standards Bill would do almost the same thing.

He said it had been hard to encourage supporters to engage with the bill, partly because of the timing and partly because of the complex constitutional nature of it.

"I would describe this, the way in which this bill has been conveyed - or even not conveyed - as cowardly, and shameful, and completely undemocratic."

One of the Regulatory Standards Bill's biggest supporters, Dr Bryce Wilkinson, also made an appearance on Thursday afternoon on behalf of New Zealand Initiative - followed immediately by a second submission from him in a personal capacity.

Dr Eric Crampton - the Initiative's chief economist - provided a preamble of the right-leaning think tank's view of what the bill aims to achieve.

"If a beneficial public purpose is being provided the cost of that shouldn't just fall on those who are compelled to provide it, it should fall on the beneficiaries of it which could be the public more generally or a defined set of beneficiaries," he said.

Dr Wilkinson said the Initiative also wants changes to the bill - like ensuring legal expertise on the board, a public interest test for takings, that compensation should be "full rather than fair", that rule-of-law protections should be strengthened, and the bill should also apply to councils - but stressed that NZI would support the bill regardless of whether the changes were included.

Arguing its aims could be achieved without making it a law, Labour's Duncan Webb asked why the bill was needed. Dr Wilkinson said the measures already in place to ensure good lawmaking practice were not working effectively.

"It's just to make executive government give Parliament more information about the nature of things it's wanting Parliament to pass - so it's a transparency mechanism for better informing Parliament, and it's needed because things aren't working well enough with all the existing processes."

He denied that it would only add another layer of bureaucracy that favours a specific set of values.

"No, it's very serious and it's very driven - contrary to all the assertions about improper measures ... by the economic problems this country is facing. Things are unsatisfactory all over the place: education, housing, health sector availability, ability to use land. Look at the problems with these decrepit buildings deteriorating because people can't afford to meet them up to earthquake standards but can't demolish them either."

In his personal submission, he highlighted that good-quality regulation was valuable for community wellbeing as well and defended the absence of specific collective rights, like indigenous people's rights and the need to safeguard environmental biodiversity - saying those were in fact included. This was challenged by Webb, who said while the bill may allow such rights, it deprioritised them.

Dr Wilkinson said the principles included in the bill were the "fundamental" ones.

Submissions were also being made by the Manukau Urban Māori Authority, while public health experts were to speak to the committee later in the day.

ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour says the bill aims to improve lawmaking and regulation, but its critics - who make up the majority of submitters - argue it does the opposite, and ignores Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

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