David Seymour says Winston Peters siding with Labour on Regulatory Standards Bill

Thursday, 20 November 2025

Winston Peters has confirmed his party will campaign against the Regulatory Standards Bill, just days after the bill became law - thanks to NZ First's votes. ACT leader David Seymour says it shows NZ First is looking to work with Labour next year.

ACT leader David Seymour says NZ First leader Winston Peters is siding with the Labour Party - and “getting ready to go” with them - following Peters’ statement that he intends to campaign on repealing Seymour’s controversial Regulatory Standards Bill.

On Thursday, Peters said he was opposed to the legislation that only became law two days ago, and would campaign against it ahead of next year’s election.

The bill, which was introduced by the ACT Party with the intention of improving the quality of regulation in New Zealand, passed its third reading last Thursday with the support of all three coalition parties.

Speaking to Waatea News on Thursday morning, Peters called the bill a “terrible overreach”, and the product of “the ACT Party’s deal with the National Party”.

“We were opposed to this from the word go, but you have only got so many cards you can play,” he said. “We did our best to neutralise its adverse effects and we will campaign at the next election to repeal it.”

Speaking to reporters at Parliament, Peters said he had “done his best” to fix the bill before it became law, but had to vote for legislation he didn’t support due to the coalition agreement.

In response, Seymour - who is also the regulations minister - described the news as “pretty worrying,” saying Peters was adopting the Opposition’s position.

Winston Peters and David Seymour shake hands at the signing of the coalition deal in 2023.

“It sounds like he’s getting ready to go with Labour again,” he said.

Seymour added that the Regulatory Standards Bill was a bottom line and that any coalition he was part of would not vote to repeal it.

“This is a landmark piece of legislation that ACT would never vote to get rid of so if he wants to do that he has got to go with Labour,” Seymour said.

Winston Peters says he will campaign to repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill.

Peters chuckled when asked if he was positioning NZ First to enter a coalition with Labour.

“Don’t make me laugh. Pardon, the Labour Party has no position on anything,” he said.

Labour Party Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni refused to say if Labour and NZ First were lining up to work together when asked, but described the coalition as being in chaos.

Carmel Sepuloni described the coalition as being in a “chaotic state”.

“Clearly the coalition is in even more of a chaotic state than what they were a year ago and they are struggling to agree on fundamental points,” she said.

This is not the first time Peters has distanced himself from his coalition partners in recent times.

Last week, Peters called National’s idea of selling state assets as a 'tawdry silly argument”.

“Because they’ve failed to run the economy properly, they want to go to the assets of a time when the country was run properly, when we were number two in the world and built up by our forefathers and to start to flog those off … to so-called balance their books,” he said.

He also told RNZ the coalition had not turned the economy around as fast as it should have.

“I know it can be turned around, but not with this sort of strategy where you’re not actually fixing the economy, you’re just getting rid of assets.”