Seymour David; Dean JacquiREGULATORY STANDARDS BILLFirst ReadingDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I move That the Regulatory Standards Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill.The Regulatory Standards Bill is part of an ongoing evolution of New Zealand's constitutional infrastructure—and let me take you back to the very beginning. Our first Parliament met in Auckland for only two months. The contest at the time was whether the Ministers appointed by the Governor who was appointed from London should be responsible to the elected officials. In the end the Governor prorogued the Parliament and in a fit of outrage parliamentarians suspended the Standing Orders; half of them tried to climb up the walls out the Speaker's gallery to deny the other members a quorum. And at one point the Prime Minister one Henry Sewell I think it was actually decked a member of the Opposition—something I sometimes think about at question time in our Parliament today.One hundred years later we had a Prime Minister called Muldoon who frequently suspended the Standing Orders and passed all manner of terrible laws. He believed select committees were a waste of time. Over the past 30 years with things like Sir Geoffrey Palmer's Constitution Act we have formalised and improved our processes and procedures for making laws so they are more accountable and more democratic. I'd add to that the Public Finance Act; the independence of the Reserve Bank in the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. Another initiative that has started but is far from complete is regulatory impact analysis. Starting in the 1990s through the 2000s Governments have experimented with regulatory impact analysis but it has by and large failed for a couple of reasons; one is that it's often not done. This Government when elected in 2017 said It's our first 100 days; we needn't do it." This is not a partisan issue; this is part of our evolution in terms of a country because the previous Government—the Helen Clark Government—did exactly the same thing.When regulatory impact analysis is done it so frequently does not meet the kinds of standards that are expected in Treasury's analysis that have been set out as Government policy by various Governments. I was a Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform a little-known position but one of my jobs was to analyse the standards of regulatory impact analysis and I found that it was often totally inadequate and when we got independent analysts from outside Treasury to do it they found the same thing.This matters to New Zealanders because the quality of our regulation is one of the main determinants of whether or not people can raise productivity. There's what experts call the productivity paradox: how New Zealand can have on balance pretty good policy settings by international standards and yet have low productivity growth over the last 30 years. It's in the lower left corner—countries that have started with low productivity and have had low productivity growth in that period. Some people are going to say "Ah the last 30 years; it was the fourth Labour Government's fault." Actually prior to that it was worse through the 1960s and 1970s when we had Muldoon and the kind of practices I've described. If we want to be wealthier and to be able to afford the kinds of things that so many New Zealanders want we need to be thinking of ways to raise productivity and one of those is to improve the quality of regulation with better processes for consulting and testing and defining the purpose of legislation and regulation to ensure that it meets the standards. This Regulatory Standards Bill is an effort that has grown out of 20 years of work: initially the Regulatory Responsibility Bill first introduced in 2006 and then there was the regulatory taskforce in the late 2000s or the noughties which produced the Regulatory Standards Bill. This bill languished on the Order Paper for some time because what one finds is that few Governments in power are prepared to put these kinds of restraints on themselves; they prefer to be able to govern in the moment even though there is plenty of evidence that is not best for investor confidence for New Zealand's long-term prosperity. This Regulatory Standards Bill codifies what good regulatory analysis is with the principles set out in clause 6. It says that if Governments wish to make laws they must make sure that they are consistent with the rule of law. They must not diminish the liberties of New Zealanders except as is necessary to protect New Zealanders' liberties. It says that laws must not take property unless compensation is provided. They must not impose taxes and charges on New Zealanders without parliamentary consent.Much of this is stuff that most people would take for granted. This Regulatory Standards Bill like the Constitution Act and other constitutional innovations before it codifies and puts them on the record. It also puts in place a number of requirements for good lawmaking questions that lawmakers—which means the Minister responsible in the case of a Government bill the member in charge in the case of a member's bill or the chief executive of the relevant department in the case of a piece of secondary legislation—must sign a certificate saying the principles have been met. They must ask what problem we're trying to solve. Do other laws already solve the problem? Is there an easy way to solve this problem without making any law? What are the costs of the law? Who pays those costs? What are the benefits? Do the benefits exceed the costs? All things that I think most people in this House would actually want a Government to do as well as ensuring the relevant people have been consulted. This is just raising the standards of lawmaking and regulation in New Zealand. Now I know that there will be some objections but first I should say the second thing the bill does other than codify good regulatory impact analysis is it gives it some teeth because what I found as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform is that my fellow executive members were all for better regulation; they didn't want the restrictions put on them just right now. Everyone wants to go to heaven. No one wants to die. This bill actually gives citizens or perhaps their bodies—it could be farmers and Federated Farmers for example—the ability to seek a declaration from the court that a particular law or regulation has not been made consistent with the rules set out in the Regulatory Standards Bill. Some people think that's a big change. That's why I'm asking this Parliament to pass it so it can be ratified by referendum in the same manner that the End of Life Choice Bill was passed by Parliament and ratified by referendum—and much of the bill is actually setting out the conditions of the referendum.There are some policy objections that people have. Some people in the past—and this debate's gone on for 15 years—have said it gives the courts too much power. Well it certainly does allow the courts to pass judgment on the laws that Parliament makes and that is new to New Zealand. But New Zealand is an outlier. We have no written constitution. We have no subnational Government states or provinces. We have no Upper House. We actually need to move closer to where most countries are that have some sort of constitutional principles that the courts can judge lawmaking against. It gives New Zealanders greater security greater stability so they can plan their lives invest and make for a more prosperous country. Some people will say that it doesn't allow the Government of the day to legislate and serve the public interest they are elected to. Actually it does. There's an exemption that anything can be justified if it passes the test of being justified in a free and democratic society. All this bill requires is proper analysis of the laws Government's making proper transparency proper reasoning to be set out and people to be consulted. That's all we're asking for with this Regulatory Standards Bill. Just think for a moment what a Government or a member of this House is really saying if they are opposed to that.Finally I'd say I wrote in considerable detail a letter to representatives of each party. I actually customised the letters to address concerns I thought they might have or that some of their supporters or members might have. Not one of them replied. The National Party have indicated to me they will support it. I think that's a real shame for the sincerity of people that come to this House. Nevertheless I conclude that this legislation should be a cross-partisan effort to improve New Zealand's infrastructure its constitutional infrastructure so we get better lawmaking and better outcomes for all New Zealanders. I'm proud to commend it to the House and sooner or later it will be law.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."