Ministry of Regulation poised to slash hard-won environmental and worker protections - Takoda Ackerley

The Government has mandated public service job cuts to save taxpayer dollars, while creating a new Ministry for Regulation with salaries averaging more than $150,000 - far higher than the median salary of $84,800 in the rest of the public sector.

Takoda Ackerley is a postgraduate student at Massey University who is concerned about the Government’s actions and its repetition of past mistakes.

OPINION

It perhaps comes as no surprise to some of us to see the new Ministry for Regulation, Act leader David Seymour’s pet project, is an expensive and overweight farce that peddles itself as a “small Government agency with a big job to do”.

It’s such a small agency that it is paying its staff salaries over $150,000 - far greater than the public service median of $84,000. All this in the face of this coalition’s reactionary promise to cut public spending and slash the “massive bureaucracies” of the former Labour government.

The new ministry employs not one but three deputy chief executives, earning up to $350,000 each, and is expected to employ over 90 people.

Sadly, this Government has mandated that public services make job cuts to save taxpayer dollars - jobs that ultimately have flow-on effects, such as destabilising our already stressed health system.

In the face of so many people losing their jobs and the demands of this Government that public institutions have to save money, they create a new ministry with salaries far higher than the rest of the public sector, all under Seymour’s smug dominion.

The Act party has stated this ministry was not created to help create better regulations but to remove what they term “red tape”.

Act’s political agenda is well-known; it does not support strict environmental regulations nor the social and economic protection of workers.

Pair that with this Government’s corporate-leaning ministers and the former lobbyists in ministerial positions, and you now have a Government with the ability to slash through hard-won environmental and worker protections.

The goal of the Ministry of Regulation under Seymour is to review existing regulations across numerous sectors and remove any they deem a hindrance to economic growth and corporate expansion. This is despite the damage that would occur if environmental regulations were removed.

Pair this with Shane Jones’ focus on expanding polluting fossil fuels as a solution to New Zealand’s energy needs and you have a recipe for environmental and, eventually, economic disaster.

I have been reading comments, news stories and columns (from that noxious group, the Maxim Institute) that argue we need to expand our utilisation of fossil fuels to meet our energy needs. This is folly - fossil fuels are a finite resource and, with humanity’s current consumption, a danger to our planet’s environmental stability.

New Zealand is well-placed to reach 100% sustainable energy.

GHD, a global service company report, indicated our country was well-placed to reach such a target if co-funding was provided and collaboration occurred between communities, businesses and government.

Instead, Act insists our number-eight-wire culture is sufficient to meet the needs of an ever-changing and dangerously precarious world.

Income inequality and cost of living pressures affect almost everyone in Aotearoa except the very wealthy. But this Government has insisted landlords are the ones in need, that cutting regulations back is what is needed, and that public services need to be cut.

No amount of “do-it-yourself” New Zealand gumption is going to solve the pressing problems in our society; only radical reforms and fast-acting solutions focused on our future adaptability and resilience will.

This Government decries beneficiaries, and yet it allows billions in unpaid taxes to be left on the table. Instead of instituting a wealth tax on the exceptionally wealthy, like most other developed nations, we hand money to them. All because of the misplaced belief in the logic of neoliberalism, which has created a New Zealand that leaves many living pay cheque to pay cheque.