Why the Regulatory Standards Bill matters for property rights

NZ Herald

11 hours ago

Every member of the United Nations has pledged to uphold the Declaration. Most have embedded property rights into their constitutions.
Property rights are a cornerstone of liberal democracy: a principle of Magna Carta, enshrined in the US Constitution, required for membership in the European Union, affirmed by the Canadian Supreme Court and protected in the Australian Constitution.
The two major exceptions? Communist states, where the state owns everything – and New Zealand.
In 1990, a Labour Government deliberately excluded property rights from the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That omission is no accident. It has consequences.
Taking property without compensation is not an aberration. It is a recurring feature of New Zealand governance – from settler governments seizing Māori land to modern 'regulatory takings'.
Often, Māori land that remains undeveloped is designated as an 'Outstanding Natural Landscape' – in effect, a park – rendering it useless to the owners but still subject to rates.
Councils have even sold ancestral Māori land for unpaid rates, often for a fraction of its true value.
Now, those who want to continue these regulatory takings urge Māori to oppose the Regulatory Standards Bill – because it lacks a Treaty clause.
Yet the bill upholds the Crown's Treaty promise to respect property, restrains the state's claim to unfettered sovereignty, and enforces the citizenship guarantee.
It is not only Māori who suffer.
Under the Public Works Act, private land is seized for 'public purposes'. Compensation is often delayed or set below market value. Ask the owners of land taken for Transmission Gully or the Waikato Expressway.
After the Christchurch earthquakes, homeowners in the red zone were presented with take-it-or-leave-it 'voluntary' buyouts. Those who refused were cut off from basic services. Only years later did the courts rule the red zoning unlawful.
These are not historical wrongs. They are present-day injustices.
The Regulatory Standards Bill does not create new rights. It simply restates principles that our governments claim to uphold but routinely ignore.
Critics say the Cabinet manual offers sufficient protection. But the manual can be amended – or ignored – at the whim of ministers. History shows it often is.
The European Union's robust climate policies disprove the notion that property rights and environmental protection are incompatible.
The bill should be much stronger. Courts should have the power to strike down legislation that breaches its principles. Governments can ignore it. What message will be sent if the bill is not passed?
The critics are not objecting to process. They object to principle. What they oppose is private ownership.
Their vision is one of 'collective rights' – where property belongs to the state and citizens live on sufferance.
This is not a technical debate. It is a fundamental question: What kind of country do we want to be?
The Regulatory Standards Bill proposes six principles that all laws should meet:
To most people, this reads like common sense. To the critics, it's dangerous ideology.
Our Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, sees the bill – as he sees everything – as a management issue: 'Improving the long-term quality of regulation.'
But this is not about better drafting. It's about what we believe: individual liberty – or the tyranny of the majority.
Opposing the bill are a who's who of the political class: Much of the bureaucracy, a coterie of activist academics and Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. Their goal? Unfettered state power.
Christopher Luxon wants efficient government. But the real question is not whether government should be efficient. It is whether its power should be limited.
If the bill is defeated it will be a licence for the state by regulatory taking to expropriate property; to trample on the principles we helped draft in 1948 and pledged to uphold.
It is time we practised what we preach.