While You Were Sleeping - The Sunday Long Read and Listen.

25/5/25

My Long Sunday Read this week is supplemented by a Long Listen in which I interview Melanie Nelson, who has been deep diving into David Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill. (See my Head2Head video interview and podcast with Melanie also published on my Substack home page today.)

If you haven’t heard about Seymour’s boring sounding bill please take this post as a wake up call to one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation yet contrived by the ACT party.

Seymour introduced it to the House last week under urgency (again!)

Public consultation was invited over the Christmas period, which I think was sneaky but never- the- less still received 23,000 submissions.They were largely against it because Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill is a Trojan Horse that poses even more of a threat to our way of life and our rule of law than his reviled Treaty Principles Bill.

Why? Because while it sounds reasonable to scrutinise legislation, the reality is that his bill aims to embed ACT’s libertarian, pro- private- interest ideology into our legislation.

Here’s what it states as it’s purpose under section 3 :

The purpose of this Act is to improve the quality of Acts of Parliament and other kinds of legislation by—

(a) specifying principles of responsible regulation that are to apply to new legislation and, over time, to all legislation; and

(b) requiring those proposing new legislation to state whether the legislation is compatible with those principles and, if not, the reasons for the incompatibility; and

(c) granting courts the power to declare legislation to be incompatible with those principles.

Such hypocrisy - for in the same week as Seymour was talking up the importance of scrutiny and transparency in making our laws, his own Deputy Leader ,Brooke van Velden, ambushed parliament with her Pay Equity amendment which got passed under urgency and robbed the women of our country of a couple of billion dollars of pay.

No transparency.

No consultation

No opportunity for scrutiny.

But, back to his Regulatory Standards Bill and let’s ask the all important question….

Cui Bono?

It’s classic question that goes back at least to Cicero, a Roman Statesman and lawyer who lived around 2070 years ago, and it’s always an excellent one to ask in situations like this one.

Cui Bono – is a Latin phrase that roughly translates as “Who benefits?”

And when you apply that simple question to this boring but far- reaching bill being promoted by David Seymour, you quickly realise the following political and commercial groups will benefit most from his proposed legislation.

1. The ACT Party who will get to embed their self-interest libertarian ideology into all future legislation.

2. Corporates (especially overseas giants ) who would be able to challenge regulations they believed impacted on their profits, with government or perhaps even Māori ( if that pesky Treaty stuff gets in the way ) being made responsible for the compensation for such perceived profit losses,.

3. Property wheelers and dealers who want no restrictions on legal use of land and won’t have to sweat environment protections - think property developers, and international corporations who want to drill for oil and gas, or mine for anything that will make them a buck.

The implications are huge.

It could mean companies (think especially wealthy overseas ones with deep pockets for legal action) could claim compensation if carbon emission targets set by our government meant a loss of profit for them, or farmers might be able to claim loss of profits from regulations protecting water quality from pesticides, or fertilisers, or cattle excrement run off.

.A fossil fuel company could conceivably claim loss of profits if the government attempts to tax the use of petrol or diesel as a way of reducing emissions, or a commercial fishing company could, in theory, claim compensation for reduced catches because of any change to fishing regulations.

In other words Seymour’s Bill promotes the rights of big business over the public good by allowing them the power to sue for projected loss of profits that might result from the passing of a law or regulation. Just think of the chilling effect that would have on both parliament and local goverment law making.

And it’s not just the goverment or local bodies who would be made liable for such profit losses, it’s everyone. Read this bit in the bill that says “the compensation is provided, to the extent practicable, by or on behalf of the persons who obtain the benefit of the taking or impairment.”

So if, say, Treaty rights got in the way of what a corporate wanted to do, it would be possible the claim for loss of profits could be directed at Māori who might have to pay the compensation.

Think about that for a moment - the indigenous people of our country potentially being sued by a foreign owned company because Treaty rights stood in the way of them exploiting a piece of land.

In short, Seymour’s bill would allow big business to sue anyone who gets in their way , including - yes- even the government itself !

Seymour talks his bill up as a pathway to creating “good law”. Really? Cut Bono!

Good for who?

Good for his party’s financial backers, not for the protection of our environment, or Māori rights, or indeed the tax payer, whose hard earned dollars could end up getting doled out to big businesses wanting to hedge any projected loss of profits by dipping into the public purse.

Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill is what Professor Jonathan Boston has called “the Everything Bill” because, if passed, it will reshape the foundations of our entire legal and regulatory system.

Make no mistake, Symour’s Regulatory Standards Bill presents an extreme right- wing threat to our democracy, and when Select Committee submissions on it are opened I hope you will join me in objecting to it, so that National and NZ First can see that they will lose votes next year if they go along with this power grab by ACT’s big business interests.

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