David Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill has been called the “strangest piece of New Zealand legislation I have ever seen” by a former Prime Minister, while a well-known Māori leader believes it’s a “power grab” to support “the old boys’ network”.
The Regulations Minister hadn’t watched all of the submissions, but said in general there had been “so much misinformation about the bill that you have to really search for a needle in a haystack to find a really constructive criticism about it”.
The first select committee hearings on the proposed bill were held on Monday morning, with a range of New Zealanders submitting. They included former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, representatives of iwi, a group of anaesthetists and disgraced former Green MP Darleen Tana.
Public consultation on the controversial legislation has so far showed significant opposition to it. Feedback to a discussion document over summer was overwhelmingly negative, but Seymour has said it’s “not a popularity contest” and what mattered was “the quality of submissions”.
The legislation would codify a set of principles that Seymour believes are a guide to “responsible regulation” and requires 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 has debate about some principles, particularly those relating to private property rights. For example, the principles say legislation should not be taken or impaired without “good justification” or “fair compensation”.
Palmer, the Labour Prime Minister between 1989 and 1990, called it the “strangest piece of New Zealand legislation I have ever known”.
“It is quite bizarre. It will not work,” Palmer said, noting there were hundreds of statutes and regulations that would need to be retrospectively considered.
He believed the “thrust” of the bill was an “unproven ideology” that there is “too much regulation”. It was intended to reduce regulation, but Palmer said regulation was “necessary in many ways”.
“The proposal is also going to disrupt the working of the House of Representatives. Indeed, it is designed to do that. The regulations standards council is going to drop reports like leaves in autumn over all sorts of ministers, select committees and everything, saying, ‘how do you justify this regulation?’”
Palmer also said there were other mechanisms to consider the appropriateness of regulation, including the Regulations Review Committee. This is a select committee chaired by an Opposition MP to make sure regulations “have been made fairly and are used consistently”.
Seymour has always said the intent of the legislation is to provide transparency to New Zealanders about regulation.
On Monday afternoon, he said Palmer had a right to his opinions but “if he thinks it’s too hard for the Government to keep tabs on all the rules it’s making, he should be worried about all the poor buggers out there that have to follow the government rules”.
Seymour didn’t believe it was “strange”, arguing the legislation brought together into “one black letter law” many things the Government is already doing.
The minister has previously suggested much of the opposition has been driven by mostly misinformed social media campaigns and bots.
But Rahui Papa, a prominent Māori orator representing Pou Tangata National Iwi Chairs Forum, told the committee that “contrary to popular view, this is not a bot submission”.
“This is actually in the hearts and minds of people that have been talking to us,” he said.
Papa said there was “major concern” about the legislation going forward and the group wanted the committee “to show leadership in stopping this bill until there can be fulsome and comprehensive consultation”.
“This is a power grab into the hands of the few. This is a power grab that will support the old boys’ network.”
His main concern was about the “side-lining of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.
Papa believed this was a “relitigation of the Treaty Principles Bill”, Seymour’s former piece of legislation that would have defined the principles of the Treaty in law so they can interpreted when mentioned in law.
That bill was voted down earlier this year, and work on the Regulatory Standards Bill had already begun prior to this. A commitment to advance the Regulatory Standards Bill was part of the National-Act coalition document written during negotiations after the 2023 election.
“We say the attacks keep on coming. This is bill is actually servicing the few and ignoring the many,” said Papa.
“We think this is about individual rights as opposed to the collective property rights that Māori have at the core function of ourselves.”
Te Tiriti doesn’t appear within the legislation’s principles and Seymour said he hadn’t heard an argument about why it 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.”
He said the principles were designed to benefit all New Zealanders.
Former MP Tana, who was ousted from Parliament following allegations she knew about alleged migrant exploitation at her partner’s business, also remotely spoke to MPs about the bill.
“This bill presents itself as neutral, as a technical tutor, but what it actually does is constrain future governance, restricts public investment, and sets up a narrow economic lens as if it’s the only valuable one,” Tana said, though the legislation does not create any new legally enforceable obligations.
Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of Health Coalition Aotearoa, said more regulation was necessary to address the harms caused by tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food.
“I would just like to put the public health risks this bill poses. The problem we face in trying to get regulations to prevent harm is not so much that the existing regulations we have are poor and have been badly written,” he said
“No, it is we have too few regulations to constrain the corporate power and the corporate exploitation of people, especially those who are struggling the hardest.”
He said he was concerned about the “regulatory chill” this legislation would create and that corporations may attempt to “weaponise” it in opposition to government policies.
When asked about the legislation explicitly saying it does not create any obligations enforceable in court, Swinburn said corporations may fail in court, but their litigation could delay regulation.
The bill did have some supporters at the select committee.
Submitter, Ananish Chaudhuri, a Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland, wrote that the bill was “sensible and its prescriptions are relatively mild”.
“It is hard to understand why it is seen by some as a neoliberal conspiracy to destroy our society. Could this be a Trojan horse aimed at achieving disruptive political change down the road? Possibly. But is that not true of many, if not all, such bills?”
He said principles guaranteeing individual rights and safeguarding property were “commonplace in most Western democracies” and nothing allowed companies to sue for lost business as some have claimed.
Chaudhuri did have a reservation about the establishment of a board, saying it went “against the ideal of curbing the size of the bureaucracy. Such boards are often subject to ideological capture and often end up as venues for creating jobs for mates”.
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.