Ministers prepare for slimmed-down official advice from today as Regulatory Standards Act comes into force
Wednesday, 1 July 2026
Government ministers are preparing for a massive change to the official public servant advice they get from today which Labour says could blind them to how changes impact the poor.
The controversial Regulatory Standards Act enters into full force on Wednesday, including its major changes to how all law and major regulatory changes are assessed by public servants.
Ministers will go from getting a “Regulatory Impact Statement” (RIS) ahead of almost every law change, regulatory decision, or discussion document to a “Regulatory Analysis Summary” (RAS).
Regulation Minister David Seymour said these documents will be shorter and rarer, with fewer needed if the change does not impact the exchange of private property, but would also be of a higher quality.
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“There are some cases where you had to fill out a Regulatory Impact Statement that actually didn't really seem to make a lot of sense. We're not here to keep the printer cartridge industry in business. We're here to get the information people need in a succinct format.”
Seymour told The Post in May the new system might exempt from analysis a change to benefit levels, as this did not clearly impact private property.
“You are more likely to be exempt if you are not placing restrictions on the use and exchange of property,” Seymour said.
Currently such changes generally go from the RIS system, with ministers given detailed distributional advice about how a change would impact various groups in society.
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said there would be “teething problems” as there was with any new system but the former system hadn’t been working well either, with some statements not even being read.
“Arguably the problem with them is that there's just a proliferation of information coming at MPs and ministers, and finding the time and knowing what to read is the most important.”
He said some RIS had been very important to Government decision-making.
Social Development Minister Louise Upston said the change was “not something that the top of my mind today” but she expected the new system would work well.
She said that she found distributional analysis of things like benefit changes useful and she expected she would still see that advice in some form.
Asked if she had ever changed her mind because of a RIS, she said that usually happened earlier in the policy development process.
Chief executives of public service agencies will also have to complete a new kind of paperwork for most new laws or secondary legislation ‒ a Consistency Accountability Statement (CAS).
These CAS documents would force the chief executive to explain how the new law either complied with the principles of the Regulatory Standards Act or why they were breaching them.
These principles include obligations to consult those being regulated, respect for the rule of law and role of courts, and a push to protect personal liberty ‒ including their liberty to “own, use, and dispose of property, except as is necessary to provide for, or protect, any such liberty, freedom, or right of another person”.
Many have pushed back on these principles, with Victoria University law professor Dr Dean Knight describing them as “strongly libertarian in character” and too political for a bill with such wide power.
Seymour said some of these statements were already being prepared for upcoming changes and the advice was “of very high quality”.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has pledged to repeal the act if elected, and said it risked creating a “two-class” New Zealand.
“It's potentially created two classes of rights for New Zealanders. There's a superior set of rights for those who own property versus those who don't,” Hipkins said.
“Good government decision making should consider all of the aspects of the consequences of government decisions, not just the consequences for those who own property.”