Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the amendment. The Regulatory Standards Bill is an important part or at least could be an important part of New Zealand's constitutional infrastructure and I'm pleased that my colleague from the National Party has moved that the bill be reinstated. But I was a little surprised to hear the enthusiasm from his caucus colleagues saying that it was a good bill because if it's such a good bill perhaps we could have advanced it up the Order Paper a little bit more in the past six years. Indeed this bill has been sitting where it is on the Order Paper for so long that it is in the name of the Hon Rodney Hide who hasn't been here for 11 years.But I have to say with some sorrow that sometimes the greater tragedy of the fifth National Government is not that it lost power but that we didn't use it when we had it. This bill should be part of our statutes and I hope that this Government will reconsider its position on the bill and advance it up the Order Paper. The way that members might like to think about it is like this: we have constitutional infrastructure in this country that arrived a little bit late in our history. The Labour Party—through the Constitution Act for instance and through the Public Finance Act—has played an honourable role in bringing about some of that belated constitutional infrastructure. We now have pretty good rules on our statute book when it comes to spending—when it comes to having fiscal updates at each Budget and twice a year otherwise before elections. Those are things that are important to our being a modern and sophisticated democracy. We have through many of our statutes—for instance the State-Owned Enterprises Act which is also a Labour Party legacy I might remind the members—pretty good rules around Government ownership—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am now going to ask the member to narrow his speech to the matter before the House and that is the amendment. It is not an opportunity for a writing of the history of economic policy in New Zealand.DAVID SEYMOUR: I was just coming to the end of that particular part of my address. But if you will allow me the significance of the Regulatory Standards Bill is that it does fit into that history and that is a history that the Labour Party made a pretty good contribution to some years ago. The one area where we don't have a good set of rules in our statutes is around the role of Government as a regulator. As a spender—pretty good rules. As an owner—pretty good rules. But as a regulator it is still the wild west out there.I happen to be a former Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform which is my answer to the question Tell us something about you that nobody knows." frequently but in that time we sought to put some of the principles that the Regulatory Standards Bill would bring into statute into the conventions of lawmaking in New Zealand. In fact members who have entered Government will discover we installed some of them into the Cabinet Manual which will be hopefully a welcome surprise for certain members and the schemes that they have. The reason that we did that is that it is not the amount that Government owns or the amount that Government spends that puts the most urgent impact on New Zealanders but the way that Government regulates. Take for example something that might sound as innocuous as the Santa parade in Greytown scheduled to take place in a couple of weeks' time. I had the pleasure of speaking to the organiser of this Santa parade who tells me it takes six weeks to organise. Two weeks are to contact the people ask them to do the floats arrange the order and have everybody ready to go. The other four weeks are required for compliance issues for just about every matter—who has the food stalls who is allowed to enter the road who the marshals are—and each and every one has a fee imposed by local government. That is the source of real irritation from councils and other government departments to everyday New Zealanders.It also lies at the heart of frustrations in just about every sector. We just heard in the Speech from the Throne that the Government seeks to allay bureaucracy in the education sector. They feel and it's something that is reflected in the feedback you get from many a teacher in our education sector that teachers have to spend far more time explaining and complying than they do performing the real transaction of teaching kids. The ACT Party of course has a solution to that but sadly the Government does not seem so enamoured of it. Nevertheless in education it's an issue. The Government wants to make most of its emphasis on housing and so it should but the fact of the matter is that the main issue in housing is that we are building half as many homes per capita as we were in the 1970s. Phil Twyford he knows this—he knows—and the reason is not that we have somehow forgotten the technology that allowed us to build homes back then. It is not that we somehow have less land in New Zealand. The country is the same size—Hon Dr David Clark: Submit your Labour Party membership application now.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well I'm a little bit too intelligent for that Mr Clark but I'll try my best. But the fact of the matter is that the real problem we have is the fact that there is far too much red tape and regulation made by a series of Governments that prevents New Zealanders from getting on with the real business of building businesses homes and families. They are hamstrung by too much red tape and regulation often passed by this Parliament and the departments that we are supposed to hold to account.So what would the Regulatory Standards Bill do about this predicament this swarm of red tape and regulation that holds back New Zealanders in so many areas from the classroom to the construction site to the Santa parade on the main street of Greytown? This bill would put in place a series of statutorily required tests on new regulations and new legislation tests that should be commonsensical and second nature to anybody in the business of making dollars who should be saying if we're going to make the law what is the problem definition. And the problem for Government officials can't just be "The Minister wants us to do this." They have to identify an actual market failure. For instance they have to show that the game theory outcome of natural interactions is not Pareto optimal or in simpler language for some of the Labour members and the newer ones you have to make sure that when all people do what is in their own perceived best interests the result for everybody in aggregate is suboptimal. Problem definition is the beginning of proper lawmaking and it's required under statute by the Regulatory Standards Bill.You see Clayton Mitchell out there—he is absolutely flabbergasted. He has never heard of "Pareto optimal" before. Nevertheless the fact of the matter is that we need having defined the problem to produce a series of options and assess them using proper cost-benefit analysis. That is the second thing you do. If you have got a number of solutions for solving a problem then surely the thing to do is to compare them on some principle basis. That would be required by the Regulatory Standards Bill.But you might also want to ask yourself a number of questions about whether a particular regulatory initiative contradicts the principles and standards that New Zealanders hold dear. We just had our Parliament commissioned and heard our Speech from the Throne presided over by a number of officers from the judiciary. The Regulatory Standards Bill asks whether a particular regulatory initiative contradicts the requirement that we respect the rule of law. It asks that we have our property rights respected. It asks that we have our freedom to trade respected.These are things that should be on the statute book alongside the very good constitutional frameworks this country has for Government owning things and spending taxpayers' money. The Regulatory Standards Bill sadly has not made any progress in the past six years but I'd put it to the new Government that it might be worth keeping around because I know that a number of members of the new Government are sitting there internally nodding away. They know exactly what I mean and they believe that this amendment should stand so the Regulatory Standards Bill can remain on the Order Paper for progress in sunnier times. Thank you Mr Speaker."