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Newsroom
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Newsroom
Anne Salmond: Freedom, for whom?
The debate over the Regulatory Standards Bill has been illuminating. New Zealanders have learned a great deal about how our society is being run at present, by whom and for whom. In this bill, a small libertarian minority is attempting to use the law of the land, past and present, to uphold the priority of private rights and property over all other values, including care for the environment, the just treatment of minority groups and the public good. A recent Post article by Andrea Vance casts light on how the Regulatory Standards Bill was conceived and drafted, and by whom. The New Zealand Initiative, a right wing think tank, with its predecessor the Business Round Table, has been trying to get such a bill passed for the past 25 years. After the last election, while the coalition Government was being formed, the Act party with just 8.6 percent of the vote negotiated the inclusion of the draft Regulatory Standards Bill in the coalition agreement, with the Treaty Principles Bill and many other measures. The Government was formed in late November 2024, with the leader of Act appointed Minister for Regulation with a new ministry, and as Deputy Prime Minister for the second half of the parliamentary term. The draft Regulatory Standards Bill was sent out for public consultation. The period for feedback was brief and included the Christmas holidays, a timing that aroused resentment. According to the Post article, during this time the New Zealand Initiative was deeply engaged in backroom discussions with the government. A primary architect of the Bill, a senior fellow of the New Zealand Initiative, was constantly in touch with the Act leader as Minister for Regulation and the CE of the new Ministry throughout, consulting on the bill. The impression one gains from the written correspondence, now in the public arena, is of a lack of wider discussion within the ministry, with critics of the draft legislation (including myself, with almost every other commentator) being dismissed in the most patronising and jaundiced terms – the opposite of a democratic exchange of ideas. In the event, and despite the unhelpful timing, 23,000 New Zealanders submitted on the draft Regulatory Standards Bill, with only .33% in favour. Nevertheless, in May 2025 the bill was brought to Parliament for its first reading, which was held under urgency, and sent to a select committee. During the consultation period, which ended in late June, a reported 150,000 New Zealanders sent in their submissions on the bill, the vast majority opposed to its measures, with 16,000 citizens asking to be heard by the select committee. Meanwhile, as Minister for Regulation, Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Prime Minister, the leader of the Act party authorised an online 'Victim of the Day' campaign, designed and delivered by staff using the logo of the Parliamentary Service on their social posts. This featured the portraits of a series of academics (including myself) and others, describing them as 'Victim of the Day' and 'deranged' for criticising the bill, and decorated with the parliamentary insignia. This effort to silence critics by online trolling, not just by the Act party but from Parliament and the highest office in the land, provoked a petition that has attracted over 24,000 signatures to date. This petition calls on the Prime Minister to uphold the requirement in the Cabinet Manual that ministers 'behave in a way that upholds, and is seen to uphold, the highest ethical and behavioural standards.' In early July, the select committee on the Regulatory Standards Bill began hearing submissions, over just 30 hours in total with no MPs in the room. Of 16,000 individual citizens who had asked to submit in person, only 208 were allowed to speak, and then for 5 minutes each. This was a further breach of the rights of citizens to have their views about legislation before parliament heard and weighed in the balance. Throughout the deliberations on this bill, in the name of individual freedom, the rights of individual New Zealanders to speak their minds and think differently from a small libertarian minority have been thwarted. This applies across the political spectrum, including many who might be described as 'conservative' in their values. New Zealanders who uphold ideas about civic responsibility as well as individual rights and property, including care for the environment, the just treatment of minority groups, Te Tiriti and legislative measures in the public interest, for instance, are dismissed as 'misinformed,' or even incapable of rational thought. If most Kiwis realised that when the bill talks about freedom for 'persons,' it's talking about freedom for corporations (which in law, are defined as legal 'persons'), not just citizens, they'd see why its backers are so keen to annihilate its critics. Individual freedom and rights sound appealing, until you understand the bill is also seeking freedom for corporations as legal 'persons' to make profits with minimal restraints. In the event, the submitters who spoke in front of the select committee were overwhelmingly opposed to the draft bill. Incisive, authoritative analyses of its flaws and negative consequences if enacted were offered from many different vantage points. In a healthy democracy, one would expect that given this kind of feedback, a select committee would recommend to reject the bill, or at least significantly revise it. A few days ago, however, an article in The Herald by Thomas Coughlan revealed that the leader of the Act party has threatened to break the coalition unless the Regulatory Standards Bill is passed as drafted. This would be another breach of the right of citizens to be heard by those in power, and for their views to be taken into account when legislation is enacted. While the Deputy Prime Minister and other advocates continue to argue this bill is simply a technical measure, aimed at smoothing the legislative process, this is clearly not the case. No political party in a coalition would threaten to bring down the Government over a trivial matter of that kind. On closer analysis, passionate rhetoric about individual rights and freedoms by Act and its supporters emerges as 'double speak,' talk that disguises an opposite intention – in this case, to force others to adopt libertarian values about the primacy of private property and the rights of corporations as legal persons, using the law to do it. This includes imposing libertarian versions of 'freedom of speech' on universities, alongside efforts to control the media in New Zealand, including the internet. Rather than the pursuit of freedom of speech, this is a fundamentally authoritarian project, underpinned by a sense of intellectual superiority. Anyone who thinks differently from the Act party, its think tanks and its backers is misguided or a fool, and must be made to pull the forelock and bow the knee, by law. 'Closed' rather than 'open' minds, backed by the exercise of political power. Faced with this kind of imposition, most New Zealanders would tell its proponents to get lost. Democratic values, a care for others and the land are still strong in this country, if not in some political parties. Distilled to its essence, that is the message coming from the electorate about the Regulatory Standards Bill – and the attempts by the same fringe party to subvert academic freedom, for instance. The majority in Parliament would be wise to listen. Act's libertarian stunts are a self-serving distraction from other, more urgent challenges – the health crisis, the energy market, resilience to climate change, and the hordes of Kiwis leaving the country, for instance. They're fiddling with old, passé ideas while the world is drowning, or burning. At the heart of the matter, a bill that requires the primacy of private property and the rights of 'persons' in all law making in New Zealand will inevitably privilege those who have 'property' and power over those who don't. While many Kiwis hold fast to ideas of 'a fair go' and a decent society, since the 1980s neo-liberal philosophies have dominated governance in this country, so that the top 1 percent in New Zealand now hold 23 percent of the wealth. Productivity suffers when there's not enough to eat at home and children go to school hungry; housing is poor or lacking altogether for many families; and low-paid workers are penalised to allow tax breaks for landlords and other wealthy interests, as in the Act-driven changes to the Pay Equity Act. The World Bank, the OECD and Nobel prize winners have all concluded that radical inequality works against sustainable prosperity. The Regulatory Standards Bill, with its privileging of libertarian ideas, will make inequality even worse, with widespread child poverty, low paid, insecure jobs and social misery. No wonder so many New Zealanders are leaving the country. Its time for National to agree to disagree with Act, and start making a positive difference for New Zealanders, or as Peter Dunne has warned, face the electoral consequences.
NZ Herald
10-07-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
The case for abolishing regional councils in NZ
Inspired by the Swiss system pushed by New Zealand Initiative executive director Oliver Hartwich, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his vision for local government is about greater devolution to local communities. But, as Bishop and his Undersecretary Simon Court have recognised, that is not where the logic of his Government's policy programme leads. The whole direction of its resource-management reforms is about streamlining and often centralising decision-making. Bishop regularly cites New Zealand councils having established more than a thousand different types of zones, each with their own technical rules that everyone in the infrastructure and commercial and residential property sectors has to discover, understand and comply with. He argues this makes a lot of work for resource management lawyers but adds to the cost and complexity of getting any individual project built. Japan, Bishop points out, with a similar size and geography as New Zealand but a population 25 times bigger, has just 13 zones that its local authorities can choose from – six for residential, three for commercial, three for industrial and one for central business districts. In Bishop and Court's telling, having, say, 20 different types of zones in New Zealand would provide ample choice for local councils to reflect local characters across their territories, ensure the construction industry could more easily and cheaply comply with the rules, and force resource management lawyers to find more productive areas of the law to focus on. What role would then be left for regional councils that either the central Government or city and district councils couldn't do, at least no worse than the status quo? The Government's critics argue that getting rid of them would weaken local democracy, but regional councillors usually find themselves unable to genuinely reflect local views anyway, for fear of judicial review. So constrained are they by their council officers that a regional council chairperson is even less a genuine community leader than a city or district mayor. Their roading, civil defence and emergency management functions could easily be split between central Government, for big projects and disasters, and city and district councils, for smaller ones. As the interest in city deals has demonstrated – not least the two-year quest by my friend and client Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown for a single agreed transport plan between central Government and Auckland Council – the major projects that local people most care about can often only be done as a partnership between the two. Why keep up the charade that the entity with the bigger budget doesn't call the shots anyway? Major projects like Auckland's City Rail Link can obviously only go ahead when central Government agrees, but that is often true even of things like two-lane bridges in places like Northland, as so crudely revealed in byelections. Abolishing regional councils and devolving some of their functions into city and district councils raises the question of whether the smaller ones could cope. That in turn raises fears of mergers that, in some cases, risk sounding more like city and district councils being taken over by the unpopular regional ones. Aucklanders' anger at their big so-called Super City, which combined smaller city and district councils with the old Auckland Regional Council, might recommend Bishop and Court tread carefully. But that anger is mainly driven by fury at the so-called Council-Controlled Organisations (CCOs), deliberately set up by then Local Government Minister Rodney Hide to be independent of the democratic process, the way central Government's State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are meant to be. The problem is that CCOs and SOEs only make sense when the plan is to turn old, inefficient government departments into something that can make a profit and then be sold. Democratic oversight is removed to allow the new CCO or SOE to focus on profit, a new commercial discipline that also helps set their price. But when there is no intention ever to sell a CCO or SOE, we end up with the worst of both worlds: entities that are neither democratically nor commercially accountable. Better to sell the ones with no public purpose, and bring the functions of the rest under democratic control, as Brown has finally achieved, at least to some extent, with Auckland Transport. If that reform succeeds, it will be even more difficult to find an Aucklander urging a return to the old system. How bad would it really be if, say, the Far North, Whangārei and Kaipara councils were merged and also took over any remaining responsibilities of the unloved Northland Regional Council? Would anyone notice, other than the bureaucrats and politicians involved? Yet abolishing regional councils does not necessarily demand mergers of city and district councils. Depending on how much of their existing functions were centralised, including roading, emergency management and monitoring water and land quality, a case could be made for splitting some of them up, as Hartwich and Luxon might prefer. If Bishop and Court's vision of a small number of zone-types comes true, then even the smallest district council would be able to decide how to paint their local zoning map. In Auckland, the 21 community boards were meant to ensure local communities still had a voice when the Super City was set up. They have failed largely because they have so few responsibilities and powers that they struggle to attract credible candidates. But if community boards were empowered to decide how their local areas would be zoned from Bishop and Court's streamlined menu, then perhaps they would start to matter. That could encourage voters and potential candidates to take them more seriously. In some areas at least, Hartwich and Luxon's vision of localism might end up sitting happily alongside Bishop and Court's vision of a streamlined, workable and efficient resource-consenting system.
NZ Herald
10-06-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Law & Society: Retroactive laws, real-time consequences
David Harvey: "Citizens lose confidence in the fairness and integrity of the legal system when laws can be changed after the fact to alter rights and obligations." Photo / Getty Images The courts and judges have come in for criticism of late. Roger Partridge of the New Zealand Initiative was critical late last year of recent decisions of the Supreme Court in a lengthy paper entitled 'Who makes the law?' – the obvious answer being Parliament. New Zealand First MP Shane Jones, likewise was personally critical of a High Court judge last year and 'had words' with the Attorney-General Judith Collins about his comments. Last month at a Law Association lunch, Jones criticised what he called the 'Americanisation' of the judiciary and of judicial activism, arguing it is Parliament that is sovereign. But what happens when Parliament itself travels outside its lane? What remedies are there for legislative overreach when Parliament is sovereign? An amendment to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act has been introduced. The act prescribes a number of circumstances where financiers have a duty of disclosure to customers. If disclosure rules are breached, the lender forfeits interest rates and fees on the transaction. Two banks, ANZ and ASB, failed to make proper disclosure and are subject to claims on behalf of 173,000 customers – a sizable cohort. Court proceedings are well under way. The amendment is retrospective in that it is designed to minimise the liability of the banks for actions that were unlawful at the time. So Parliament retrospectively cures their unlawful acts and the 173,000 potential claimants lose out. Parliament can do anything it likes, according to Jones. The only problem is there are rules about retrospective legislation. Section 12 of the Legislation Act 2019 states very simply: 'Legislation does not have retrospective effect.' The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 also makes it clear there should be no retroactive penalties, though that rule is more applicable to criminal cases. The issue of whether laws have provided retroactive penalties have troubled judges, academics and law students in examinations for some years. One of the core principles of the rule of law is that individuals must be able to know in advance what conduct is legal or illegal. Retrospective laws can punish people for actions that were legal when committed, which violates this predictability. In the case of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance's Act, the retrospective law deprives 173,000 people of a remedy they would have had. Similarly, the retrospective changes to the pay equity process have halted 33 pay equity claims affecting many thousands of workers. Citizens lose confidence in the fairness and integrity of the legal system when laws can be changed after the fact to alter rights and obligations. This can foster fear and uncertainty. Some argue retrospective laws violate fundamental human rights and democratic principles, as they remove the ability of individuals to make informed choices based on existing laws. Although retrospective laws are generally discouraged, there are rare cases where they are justified – such as when correcting legal loopholes or addressing past injustices. However, they remain controversial and should be used with extreme caution. Is there a remedy for this overreach? No, other than by way of the ballot box. We have no overriding constitution. We have no court that can say Parliament is in breach of the rules and challenging a fundamental premise of the rule of law and that changes such as those to the credit act and pay equity regime are 'unconstitutional'. But perhaps the problem is deeper. Perhaps we rely on Parliament too much to solve our problems. When a problem comes up it seems the government is the first port of call. Perhaps if there was less reliance on Parliament 'fixing' things, the risk of retrospective laws would be much smaller.
Newsroom
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Newsroom
When populists cannot be tamed
Opinion: In two weeks, we will take a delegation of New Zealand Initiative members to the Netherlands. We had hoped to study Dutch excellence in infrastructure, technology and regulatory reform. Now it looks like we will also land in a nation nursing a political hangover. On June 3, the right-wing populist Geert Wilders destroyed the government he helped create just 11 months ago. His Party for Freedom withdrew support.
Scoop
05-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
A Fast-Track To Stronger Grocery Competition
Press Release – The New Zealand Initiative The Initiatives Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton added, The underlying problem has always been regulatory structures that make new entry practically impossible. Fixing that real problem makes far more sense than break-ups that risk increasing … Wellington (Thursday, 29 May 2025) – The government has viewed stronger retail grocery competition as a national priority. But zoning, consenting, and overseas investment approval processes make new entry far too difficult. The New Zealand Initiative today showed how to open New Zealand's markets to more competition. It released drafting instructions for a Fast-track Supermarket Entry and Expansion Omnibus Bill, which would rapidly approve retail grocery developments at scale and cut through complex barriers that are preventing new supermarket chains from entering the New Zealand market. The proposed Fast-Track pathway would: Streamline rezoning, consenting and investment clearance processes for a set of new stores and associated warehouses as a package, providing decisions within months; Override obstructive planning regulations; Open New Zealand's grocery sector to the real possibility of a new competitor; Disappear when resource management reform has made the pathway irrelevant. Proposal author Dr Benno Blaschke said, 'New Zealand has a lot of fast-track regimes, but none of them can give a single, timely decision for complex projects across multiple councils. Our process achieves this and has been crafted for policy officials and legislative drafters to pick up and run with.' Dr Blaschke explains, 'Fixing the rules of the game allows the competitive process to unfold. If there are super-profits in grocery retail, opening the market lets new entrants compete for them while providing better service to consumers.' The Initiative's Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton added, 'The underlying problem has always been regulatory structures that make new entry practically impossible. Fixing that real problem makes far more sense than break-ups that risk increasing prices for consumers.' The New Zealand Initiative is supported by businesses in its membership, including two supermarket chains. Our proposal would explicitly prevent existing major supermarket chains from using this fast-track process for at least five years, reserving the pathway for new entrants and smaller competitors before enabling existing chains to engage in more strenuous head-to-head competition. Dr Benno Blaschke and Dr Eric Crampton explore this research note in the latest New Zealand Initiative podcast. Listen here.
