David Seymour dismisses officials’ concern with Regulatory Standards Bill

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

Regulation Minister David Seymour promises to slash early childhood red tape, but critics say loosening teacher qualification rules could harm safety and quality of care.

Government departments have told Cabinet the Regulatory Standards Bill is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights and poses a significant cost on regulation-making.

But Regulation Minister David Seymour has dismissed the concerns as revealing “how poor the level of policy thinking is in some government departments”.

Seymour on Wednesday announced Cabinet had agreed on how the Regulatory Standards Bill, an ACT Party project 20 years in the making, should proceed. It will create a “benchmark” regime for regulations based on principles including liberty and property rights, and a Regulatory Standards Board to scrutinise and receive complaints.

The bill has been heavily criticised by the Green Party, which calls it the Treaty Principles Bill in another guise and claims it will open the door to corporate greed.

Some government departments, according to the policy paper signed off by Cabinet this week, have issued their own critiques.

The Ministry for the Environment said though it supported the intent of the legislation, the bill’s focus on individual rights and take of property conflicted with core principles in New Zealand’s environmental and climate systems.

These systems focussed “on balancing short-term and longer-term interests, and collective, rather than individual, interests”, and the bill could have “unintended consequences that may inhibit and undermine” ministers and the secretary of environment’s ability to do their job under legislation.

Green MP Francisco Hernandez says the Regulatory Standards Bill opens the door for “corporate greed”.

“It may have financial sustainability implications for the Crown and local government, reversing the ‘polluter pays’ onus, increasing future costs due to inaction now, and placing increased uncertainty and transaction costs on firms and individuals that could hamper economic growth.”

Seymour said Governments could “of course” create polluter-pays laws under the regulatory standards regime.

“You would be restricting a liberty for someone to be able to pollute, but you would also be protecting everyone else's liberty.”

The Ministry of Justice said the “liberties” principle differed from how rights and freedoms were expressed in the Bill of Rights Act, and the omission of the Treaty of Waitangi meant the Crown’s “positive duty” to acknowledge the rights and interests of Māori in policy and legislation was not recognised.

Te Puni Kōkiri said the legislation would be improved by not elevating “values of more importance to some New Zealanders above values of more importance to others”.

Seymour said the bill would put extra costs on people that want “to make bad laws, inconsistent with the principles”.

“It makes it more expensive, politically, legally, administratively, to make bad laws.

“However, it is also going to replace some of the policy work that governments already have to do.”

Green Party public services spokesperson Francisco Hernandez said the Regulatory Principles Bill was the Treaty Principles Bill “in disguise”, for its lack of reference to the Treaty of Waitangi, and “opens the door for community to be completely consumed by corporate greed”.

“[Seymour] says that this bill is about setting up principles for good law making … We would assert that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is central to good law making, and it should be one of the principles that's included in it.”

Seymour said there remained the Waitangi Tribunal to address Treaty issues, which was not the purpose of his law.

What is the Regulatory Standards Bill?

The Regulatory Standards Bill would require ministers and government agencies to assess legislation and regulations against a series of principles: rule of law; liberties; taking of property; taxes, fees and levies; and the role of the courts.

Also to be assessed would be the consultation with those affected by the regulation, the alternate options considered, and a cost-benefit analysis.

If the lawmaking or regulation is assessed as inconsistent with any of these principles, the minister or agency would have to publicly explain this.

A Regulatory Standards Board of political-appointees would also be set up under the bill to make its own assessment of whether legislation lived up to the principles. Inquiries into this may be prompted by a complaint, a minister, or under the board’s own direction.

Its recommendations would be non-binding.

The bill would also empower the Ministry of Regulation, newly created under the National-ACT coalition agreement and of which Seymour is minister, to require information from public service agencies for regular reports on the government’s regulatory system.