Nicola Willis suggests National may join other parties campaigning to repeal Regulatory Standards Act

The National Party could join coalition partner NZ First and campaign on repealing the Regulatory Standards Act at the next election, deputy leader Nicola Willis says.

This is despite the law, which was pushed by the Act Party during coalition talks, being less than a month old, and having been passed into law with votes from both National and NZ First.

Speaking to Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills on Newstalk ZB, Willis said National had not “come up with what our party position will be after the election”.

“We haven’t ruled out repealing it either. We haven’t taken a position yet, but it’s not impossible that we would go to the campaign trail saying, ‘yes, we met our coalition commitment, we supported that into law, but actually we agree with the concerns of some people, it hasn’t operated as we’d hoped and we want to repeal it’.

“We haven’t come to a position yet, but we haven’t ruled it out.”

NZ First leader Winston Peters shocked the coalition last week when he said his party would campaign on repealing the law it had just helped to pass.

His position is that the coalition obliged his party to pass the law, but his party is free to repeal it in the next Parliament.

Willis said she was “comfortable” with this position.

“They joined the Cabinet, they used their votes to ensure it is passed into law – they did their bit,” Willis said.

Willis is not the only National MP to float repealing the law.

Last week, when her colleague Chris Bishop was asked what the party was thinking, he replied, “you’ll see our policy going into the election”.

“I’m not going to give you a commitment on National policy,” he said.

All three opposition parties say they will repeal the law if they have the numbers next term. Labour MP Duncan Webb has even submitted a member’s bill to the ballot which, if drawn, would give NZ First the opportunity to repeal the law this term of parliament.

Peters, however, described this as game-playing and said he would not be supporting the effort.

Act leader David Seymour attacked Peters’ about-turn on the law, saying it looked as though Peters was gearing up to join another Labour-led coalition, something Peters has said he would not do while Chris Hipkins was leader of the party.

The Regulatory Standards Act is designed to improve the quality of government regulation by establishing a set of principles for what constitutes “good regulation”.

Part of the controversy surrounding the law is the fact these principles are closely aligned to Act’s political worldview and do not constitute more universally recognised principles of good regulation.

The act is also controversial for the creation of a regulations board that acts as an assessor of compliance against these principles, although power to act on what the board says ultimately still rests with ministers and Parliament.