‘Ministry of Regulation’ now official, new chief executive appointed

Thursday, 7 March 2024

A red-tape cutting “Ministry of Regulation” is under way with a new chief executive, former Oranga Tamariki chief Gráinne Moss.

The promised ministry, which the ACT party campaigned for, will not be fully operational for months, but with Moss appointed and the ministry officially created, the process of assembling staff and seeking money in the coming Budget is under way.

ACT leader David Seymour, the National-coalition Government’s inaugural minister of regulation, said on Thursday he expected the ministry to have a staff of 60 working across three tasks: improving “abysmal” regulatory impact assessments for government policy, investigating bad regulations in certain sectors to “nuke” them, and developing regulatory skills across government.

'Given how woeful regulation has been, having a very small ministry is going to make a big difference.“

Seymour said he was “thrilled” with the appointment of Moss as interim chief executive, as she was one of few people to have started a new ministry.

Irish-born Moss was the first chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, the child welfare agency created out of the former Child, Youth, and Family in 2017. But her tenure was troubled by years of ongoing criticism of the agency and calls from Māori leaders for her to resign - which she did in 2021.

'I see her as being a victim of exactly the sort of politics that the ACT party has campaigned to stop over the past few years,“ Seymour said.

“And I believe, from my interactions with her, that she has exactly the kind of characteristics that are required to get people enthused about a new job and enthused about a new workplace.”

The new ministry - which has become the fourth “central agency” alongside the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Public Service Commission, and Treasury - would be part funded by the $6 million a year the Government has freed up closing down the Productivity Commission.

Seymour said he expected three teams of perhaps six staff each working on different sector reviews, inspecting regulations placed on the likes of early childhood education and building and construction.

Further staff and resource would be drawn in from the current team of 10 Treasury who complete quality assurance on regulatory impact statements. This team was “woefully insufficient” for the job, he said, and should be doubled.

'Last year, Treasury did quality assurance on only 10 regulatory impact statements … at a time when dozens, hundreds, maybe not thousands but certainly hundreds of regulatory initiatives are passed, and no one was checking if they actually made sense. So we've going to seriously ramp up that capability.“

And resource would be brought over from the cross-agency “G-REG” group that seeks to improve regulation across government.

Once ministry staff produce a review of a sector, a omnibus bill which changes multiple laws at once would be prepared to draw a line through regulations to be abolished.

'There are a huge number of laws on the books and no one can even remember who was responsible, for example, the earthquake legislation … that's done extraordinary damage to New Zealand, for almost no benefit,“ Seymour said.

'Let's say we did a review of the earthquake laws, which we may well do something in the building materials space, and the building regulations face for that matter. We present a proposal to say, well, these laws need to change.“

If the minister responsible for that area of law disagreed with the attempt to abolish regulations, Seymour said, the public would at least know “who’s responsible”.

“All we're doing, in a way, is a giant transparency exercise, designed to make politicians much more careful regulators.“