Submission on the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill

^{Cows in Whanganui Inlet, Golden Bay. Geoffroy Lamarche.}

The Commissioner has made a submission to the Ministry for Regulation on the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill outlining his concerns about its implications for environmental protection.

He argues that if environmental regulation were to be considered under the proposed bill, then the principles need to be completely re-written to elaborate the limitations of private property rights as they relate to externalities and the use of public goods and common pool resources, and to spell out their relationship with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

He also questions whether such a bill is necessary to improve the development of regulations and regulatory stewardship when numerous mechanisms already exist. Improving those should be the priority, not new legislation. The Commissioner’s recommendations include:

• Improvements must be made to how natural capital and ecosystem services are valued: this would require investment by government agencies so that we can determine whether benefits of any regulations outweigh its costs.
• Any decisions must be based on good environmental information. A lack of readily accessible information creates more risk averse decision making.
• A lot of the variance in decision making around the country can be explained by different attitudes to risk. This could be helped by having some consistent principles about how to deal with risk and uncertainty.
• Improvements to existing regulatory processes are needed, including bringing into force Part 4 of the Legislation Act 2019, bolstering the role of the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee, and minimising the use of current parliamentary practices that truncate the time available for regulatory assessment and allow the passage of legislation under urgency.
• If there is a desire to legislate for new rights and liberties, these should be advanced as amendments the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the Constitution Act, or other relevant existing legislation.

Read the submission.