Labour’s Deborah Russell fires up questioning former judge over Regulatory Standards Bill

A select committee hearing on David Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill turned into “academic jousting” on Tuesday morning as Labour’s Dr Deborah Russell went head-to-head with a retired District Court judge.

The legislation would codify a set of principles that Seymour believes are a guide to “responsible regulation” and require agencies to assess the consistency of legislation against these. A board would be established to assess different legislation. However, this would only be able to make non-binding recommendations or findings of inconsistency.

The proposed principles found in the bill include that it is important laws are “clear and accessible”, should “not unduly diminish a person’s liberty” and there should be reasonable consultation on bills. There are principles about private property rights, such as allowing for “fair compensation” if these are impaired or taken.

David Harvey, who served as a judge between 1989 and 2021, was submitting on the legislation and expressing general support for it. His written submission said the bill introduced a “proper, rigorous process for considering the enactment of legislation”.

He covered several themes from his written submission, including that the bill was “not constitutional” but instead “procedural” and could be amended or repealed by future Governments.

“The only thing is that if it is going to be ignored, those who are responsible for ignoring it are going to have to stand up and say why,” Harvey said.

One of his arguments was that the legislation didn’t reflect a libertarian ideology, as some critics have suggested.

“Every piece of legislation that is enacted involves an erosion or some form of interference with individual or corporate liberty,” Harvey said.

He said the principles which legislation could be compared against in the future involved a “process of legislative balancing”, but he did not believe this was an example of libertarian ideology.

Labour's Deborah Russell questioned David Harvey. Photo / Parliament

Labour’s Russell asked Harvey “what notion of liberty you’re working with”, as she believed it was “contentious” to suggest every law infringes on liberty.

Harvey responded by asking if she was familiar with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the German Enlightenment philosopher.

“I have a PhD in political theory so I’m familiar with [Thomas] Hobbes”, Russell responded.

As Russell continued, Harvey asked if she was aware of the opening line of Rousseau’s The Social Contract.

She said: “There is no need to patronise me. I am asking you what notion of liberty you’re working with.”

Harvey said: “’Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’. The chains in fact are legislation. Everywhere, any time that you enact legislation, you infringe on a person’s liberty, freedom of action or ability to choose.”

Russell said: “You don’t buy into the notion, then, that in actual fact the laws can create our liberties, which is the Harringtonian notion, or the notion that comes to us through the civil republican tradition, as opposed to the liberal or libertarian tradition.”

Harvey said he was “more a person from the Enlightenment”, which Russell said she was too.

“I’m afraid that just stating that as a notion of liberty is actually a deeply contested view of liberty,” Russell said.

Harvey said it might be contested, but “it might be one to which I adhere”.

Following that, the select committee’s chair Ryan Hamilton said there was nothing like a “good academic jousting on a Tuesday morning”.

In 2019, Labour complained about a National Party social media ad of Russell talking about wellbeing in ancient times, including the philosophy of eudaimonia: happiness.

“It is an ancient idea as part of the ancient wisdom,” Russell said in the House at the time.

She last month apologised after swearing during a select committee Acting Prime Minister David Seymour was appearing at.

Should the Treaty be referenced?

Later in Tuesday’s select committee hearing, Harvey faced questions from Act’s Cameron Luxton about the former judge’s view that the legislation should make reference to the Treaty of Waitangi.

“It involves elements of governance. It involves elements of equal application of the law. Articles 1 and 3 of the Treaty. For those reasons, there should be some recognition of the Treaty,” Harvey submitted.

“I’m not exactly sure how that should be done within the scope of the bill.”

Luxton asked whether he thought the legislation’s principles already accounted for those articles of the Treaty, to which Harvey said they could “in a very vague sense”, but he believed there should be specificity about it.

“I’m not one who suggests that the Treaty has a place in every piece of legislation, but because there are elements of governance and because there are elements of equal application, I think that that has got to be made clear and should be referenced within the bill.”

The Act MP asked how that could be done, but Harvey said he’d need time to consider that.

“I’m still recovering from my academic dispute with Dr Russell,” Harvey said.

Seymour on Monday said he hadn’t heard an argument about why the Treaty should be referenced.

“All these people sort of mindlessly say, ‘you must have the Treaty of Waitangi because it’s our founding document’.

“All of that is true, but they aren’t really able to give a practical example of why making the Treaty a principle in this particular law will change the amount of red tape New Zealanders face.”

Seymour said the principles in the Regulatory Standards Bill were designed to benefit all New Zealanders.

Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. In 2025, he was a finalist for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.