Regulatory Standards Bill hearing, day four: The grand finale

The Spinoff

10-07-2025

On the last day of hearings into the Regulatory Standards Bill, the finance and expenditure committee heard from the man who dreamt up the bill's blueprint.
The lights are coming down on the Regulatory Standards Bill show in select committee room four: after four days, 30 hours of hearings, 208 submitters, and not a single MP actually setting foot in this room, the finance and expenditure committee's hearings into the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) have come to a close. From here, the committee will report back to the House on the evidence they've heard by mid-September – by this time next year, the RSB will be in full force.
The first speaker of the day was Toitū Te Tiriti's Eru Kapa-Kingi, who opposed the bill. Kapa-Kingi told the committee that while the number of submitters on the bill (reported to be around 150,000) is 'impressive', Toitū Te Tiriti had found it difficult to 'market and promote' opposition to the RSB due to 'fatigue' from its members, the timing which had seen the bill 'creeping through the night', and the fact that the bill itself is a 'hard sell' due to confusion about its purpose – 'but this is all by design, and it's extremely concerning'.
Also submitting against, Manukau Urban Māori Authority chief executive Tania Rangiheuea labelled the RSB an 'attack on Māori rights masked as regulatory reform'. She condemned the bill's omission of the Treaty, and the lack of consultation with Māori which repeated a 'colonial pattern of exclusion'. 'If [David Seymour] holds publicly stated views that funding targeted to Māori is 'racist',' Rangiheuea said, 'then it's reasonable to conclude that any future legislation seeking to honour te Tiriti will be unfairly deemed noncompliant under this bill.'
Legislation Design and Advisory Committee chair Mark Steel and members Jonathan Orpin-Dowell and Simon Peart recommended the RSB be passed but not as currently drafted, and suggested amendments. These included establishing a regulatory framework without principles, ensuring that if principles are kept that they should be decided by a 'broad-based consensus driven process' and limiting the scope of the framework/principles to only apply to primary legislation.
Asked by committee member and Labour MP Duncan Webb for their observations on clause 24 of the bill, which specifies it has no legal force, Steel said the clause was 'unusual but not unprecedented'. Orpin-Dowell said that if the bill remained in statute for a long period of time, the courts may look at it as a statement of principles that legislation should adhere to.
Energy Resources Aotearoa's John Carnegie and Angela Parker supported the bill, as current 'poor regulation' had increased their industry's sovereign risk and left Aotearoa with a 'significant energy shortfall'. 'Flip flop' government policies, such as the 2018 ban on oil and gas exploration, had damaged investor confidence in the sector, and Carnegie argued that respect for property rights must be a 'core' regulatory principle – 'in the end, consumers lose when government actions reduce the value of private property.'
The sector is 'crying out' for efficient regulation, Carnegie said. The decommissioning regime introduced under the Crown Minerals Amendment 2021, which applied to retrospective permits, had impacted investor decisions and disregarded their expectations and thus reduced the value of assets 'by force of law'. 'Hence the energy crisis we now face,' Carnegie said.
The New Zealand Initiative's chief economist Dr Eric Crampton and senior fellow Dr Bryce Wilkinson – the latter of whom laid out the blueprint for the RSB in a 2001 report – submitted in favour of the bill. The RSB would bring 'greater scrutiny' and transparency to legislation introduced under urgency, Crampton said, and its principle of compensation would ensure that the cost of providing 'beneficial public purposes' doesn't just fall on 'those who are compelled to provide it'.
'It's fun to think about what would have happened, had something like the Regulatory Standards Bill been in effect when iwi lost the right to regulate their own housing on their own land,' Crampton offered. 'I don't know whether it has been fun,' Te Pāti Māori's Mariameno Kapa-Kingi replied.
Afterwards, Wilkinson gave a solo submission, which was mostly just a back and forth between himself and Labour Party committee members Duncan Webb and Deborah Russell. When Webb questioned why the bill's principles omitted values such as indigenous and environment rights – which he considered to be 'central touchstones to good legislation' – Wilkinson replied that Webb was 'totally wrong … what protection for Māori is not in the existing principles?'
Russell went through a list of the bill's opponents – Sir Geoffrey Palmer, the Iwi Chairs Forum, Northland Regional Council, the NZ Council of Civil Liberties, etc etc – and asked Wilkinson, are you saying all these legal and government experts are wrong? Well, Wilkinson replied, I can name you one which doesn't attack me: the Legislation Advisory Committee.
'They attack what the law is going to be, and it's just extraordinary that you would think that these people do not have valid concerns about this bill,' Russell bit back. But committee chair Cameron Brewer called time – unless Wilkinson had a closing remark?
'No, I'm good,' Wilkinson replied.
Up next was lawyer Annette Sykes, who submitted against the 'vague and open-ended' bill for its failure to consider Māori perspectives and experiences. It is a 'deep insult' to promise property rights to individuals and corporations when this has been denied to Māori, she said, and there is a risk foreign investors could seek claims in the millions and billions which would have a 'chilling effect' when implementing Treaty obligations.
'Māori are not just an individual or corporation – we have obligations as kaitiaki to this land, and to all future generations that share this land with us,' Sykes said. 'There is no definition of property.'
Victoria University Student Association president Liban Ali also submitted against the bill, because students have bigger issues to worry about. The bill treats regulations as a 'burden', Ali said, but students 'rely' on good regulations to make sure their flats are liveable, their employment is protected in insecure work, and that they can get to class with the help of taxpayer subsidies. 'People are desperate for leadership, not ideological side quests,' Ali said.
Tauranga Māori Business Association's Jacqui Rolleston-Steed was one of the last speakers of the day, and opposed the bill due to its risk of doing 'harm' to Māori businesses – the group would like to see improved regulatory process, but one that includes the perspectives of tangata whenua. Rolleston-Steed said the aspirations set out in the bill don't reflect the realities of Māori business – on the bill's focus on freedom of contract, Rolleston-Steed said collective agreements and tikanga obligations are more common practices among Māori, while property is usually held in collective Māori titles and trusts.
'This bill treats their way of working collectively, culturally-grounded and long term focused as non-compliant, because it doesn't fit the Western business model,' Rolleston-Steed said.
And then it was all over: months of social media campaigning, an urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing and in recent weeks, accusations of some kind of 'derangement syndrome' in the air, the select committee's hearings on the RSB were over. All that was left in select committee room four were the two hard working Clerks at the benches, a smiling security guard and a lowly Spinoff reporter.