The Regulatory Standards Bill: Neoliberal Shackles Disguised As 'Good Law"

Scoop

31-05-2025

When the New Zealand Parliament debates "better law-making," most people yawn. It sounds procedural, technocratic — even boring. But beneath the jargon of 'clarity,' 'predictability,' and 'transparency,' lurks a political agenda. The Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB), first introduced in 2011 by ACT Party founder Roger Douglas's disciple Rodney Hide and continuously revived in various guises since, represents a stealth weapon in the arsenal of neoliberal capitalism. It is a Trojan horse for embedding pro-market ideology into the very machinery of the state — making it harder for any future government, let alone a radical movement, to challenge the dominance of capital.
We argue that the bill is not about making regulation 'better' or 'fairer,' but about handcuffing future lawmakers to an ideology that privileges private property, contract law, and the capitalist 'right to profit.' Its passage would mark a dangerous deepening of bourgeois legalism, constraining any collective attempts to democratise the economy or dismantle capitalist structures through parliamentary reform — let alone revolutionary means.
The Origins: ACT's Neoliberal Dream
To understand the Regulatory Standards Bill, we must start with ACT. Founded in the 1990s as the ideological successor to Roger Douglas's Rogernomics project, the ACT Party exists to finish what the Fourth Labour Government started: the total commodification of public life. With its roots in Chicago School economics, ACT idolises the free market, loathes the state (except when protecting capital), and views regulation as an obstacle to "freedom" — defined narrowly as consumer and investor liberty.
In 2009, the National-ACT confidence and supply agreement commissioned a taskforce led by arch-neoliberal Graham Scott to look into 'regulatory responsibility.' Its conclusion: regulation should conform to a strict set of principles designed to prevent the state from interfering too much with market activity. This taskforce gave birth to the Regulatory Standards Bill.
Rodney Hide introduced the first version in 2011. It was met with scepticism, even from centrist legal scholars, who warned that the bill would judicialise politics and constitutionalise neoliberalism. While the bill didn't pass, its zombie-like persistence over the years shows how committed the New Zealand right remains to embedding capitalist ideology in law.
What the Bill Proposes: Rights for Capital, Not People
At first glance, the RSB reads like a list of nice-sounding principles: laws should not be retrospective, should respect property rights, should avoid creating unnecessary costs, and should be clear and accessible. But a closer look reveals its insidiousness.
1. "Property Rights" as Sacred
One of the central tenets of the bill is that laws should not 'take or impair property' unless justified. This may sound reasonable, but in practice, it elevates private property above public interest. It would give courts — not the people — the power to decide whether environmental protections, housing controls, or land use laws unduly infringe on property rights. It shifts power from democratically accountable institutions to unelected judges, many of whom are steeped in commercial law and capitalist ideology.
This is a direct threat to mana whenua struggles for land justice. Imagine if land reform legislation, urban rent controls, or even a future law to nationalise fossil fuel companies were struck down because they infringed on 'property rights.' The bill constitutionalises the most reactionary legal principle of all: that the right to own and profit from land or capital is inviolable.
2. 'No More Than Necessary'
Another clause says that regulation should not impose 'obligations, costs, or risks' that are more than 'reasonably necessary.' But who decides what's 'necessary'? Under capitalism, this often means what's necessary for profit. Environmental laws, workplace protections, or rent freezes could all be challenged for being 'too costly' to business. The bill invites judicial activism — not in the progressive sense, but as a means of protecting capitalist interests from redistributive policies.
3. Parliamentary Veto in Disguise
The bill would require that every new law be accompanied by a "certification" that it complies with these principles. If it doesn't, it must be justified — and could be challenged in court. This sets up a system where legislation is no longer judged on its social merit, but on how well it conforms to market logic.
In essence, it's a regulatory veto wrapped in legal procedure. The aim is to make it politically and legally risky for any future government to pass redistributive or transformative laws.
Embedding Capitalist Ideology into Law
What makes the RSB especially dangerous is not just its content, but its method. It doesn't ban socialism outright. Instead, it sets up legal roadblocks that make any move toward economic democracy more difficult, expensive, or outright unconstitutional.
This is classic capitalist strategy: not just win political battles, but rig the rules. It's the same logic behind investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses in trade agreements, which allow corporations to sue states for regulating in the public interest. It's the logic behind independent central banks, which remove monetary policy from democratic control. And it's the logic behind 'fiscal responsibility' laws that force governments to prioritise debt repayment over social investment.
The RSB is part of this neoliberal constitutionalism. It transforms what should be political questions - Who owns the land? Should rent be controlled? Should fossil fuels be nationalised? - into legal technicalities. It makes revolution, or even reform, illegal by stealth.
Aotearoa's Class War by Other Means
The Regulatory Standards Bill must be understood in the context of Aotearoa's broader class structure. We live in a settler-colonial capitalist state where wealth is concentrated among a small elite - disproportionately Pākehā - while working-class, Māori, and Pasifika communities struggle under the weight of exploitation, housing precarity, and intergenerational poverty.
In such a context, regulation is one of the few remaining tools communities have to fight back. Whether it's tenant protections, limits on corporate land use, environmental regulations, or worker rights, regulation is one of the few levers available within capitalist democracy to redistribute power and resources.
The RSB seeks to destroy that lever. It cloaks itself in legal neutrality, but in reality, it is a ruling class weapon designed to foreclose collective action. It represents the judicialisation of class war. One where the capitalist class doesn't need tanks or cops to crush resistance, just well-written legislation and friendly judges.
The Limits of Parliamentary Critique
It's important to note that opposition to the RSB has come not just from the left, but from mainstream legal figures and centrists worried about the erosion of parliamentary sovereignty. The New Zealand Law Society, in a rare political statement, warned that the bill would shift power from Parliament to the judiciary, undermining democratic accountability.
But for anarcho-communists, the issue goes deeper than defending Parliament. Parliamentary democracy in a capitalist state is already limited, corrupt, and structurally skewed toward the ruling class. Our concern is not that the RSB undermines Parliament per se, but that it further consolidates capitalist power within the state, making radical transformation through any legal means even harder.
In this sense, the RSB is not an aberration but a logical outcome of a capitalist democracy reaching its authoritarian phase. As global inequality deepens and ecological collapse accelerates, capitalist states are preemptively locking in protections for the wealthy - insulating themselves from the possibility of revolt.
A Vision Beyond the Bill
Anarcho-communists reject the premise of the RSB because we reject the premise of capitalist law itself. We do not believe the protection of property is a neutral good. We do not believe 'regulatory efficiency' should be the measure of political action. And we do not accept a legal framework that privileges capital over collective well-being.
Instead, we fight for a society based on direct democracy, collective ownership, and ecological harmony. We envision a world where land is returned to tangata whenua, where housing is a right not a commodity, and where communities make decisions together, without the distortions of profit or property law.
In such a world, the RSB would be unthinkable — not just because it's unjust, but because its very logic would no longer apply. There would be no 'regulators' because there would be no corporations to regulate. No 'property rights' because the land would belong to all. No 'cost-benefit analyses' because human need, not market efficiency, would guide our choices.
What Is to Be Done?
The Regulatory Standards Bill has not yet passed — but it remains a live threat. ACT and National are eager to revive it, and a future coalition could easily slip it through under the radar.
We must oppose it not just with legal submissions or op-eds, but with direct action and radical education. We must expose it for what it is: a blueprint for capitalist entrenchment, not a neutral law reform. And we must prepare ourselves intellectually, and organisationally for the broader authoritarian turn it signals.
This means:
Popular education in unions, hapū, and community groups about the bill's implications.
Legal support for those resisting unjust property laws and regulations.
Resisting co-optation by parliamentary parties who offer weak, technocratic opposition.
The battle over the Regulatory Standards Bill is a battle over who controls the future: the people, or capital. Let's make sure it's us.