Have you submitted on the 'dull but dangerous' Regulatory Standards Bill?

Here's my submission

This image courtesy Shaun Lee - see his post on the Regulatory Standards Bill at https://blog.shaunlee.co.nz

Have you made your submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill? If not, please do! It is easy to feel daunted by all the information and opinion you have seen on the bill. But just keep it simple - stick to one or two key points that concern you most. You do not have to be an expert on lawmaking (you are inherently an expert on being a citizen of New Zealand, which is all that matters). Your job is not to do a comprehensive analysis of everything wrong with the bill or regale the Committee with the bill’s libertarian underpinnings.

I am sharing my submission, not because it is a fantastic piece of prose or comprehensive body of analysis - but just to demonstrate how you only need to cover one or two ideas and build on those (in my case, the constraining effect of the bill on the state’s ability to intervene on our behalf to protect the environment). The key is to not overthink it and get started!

Make your submission on the Parliamentary website at this link. Submissions close 1.00pm, 23 June.

Tēnā koutou,

I firstly which to state, in the strongest terms, that I oppose this Bill.

Further, for avoidance of doubt, I would like to reassure the Committee that I am not a BOT. I am living and breathing human being fully capable of thinking independently of any other individual, organisation or institution. This submission was not generated by an online submission tool, AI or any other automated process.

The Regulatory Standards Bill masquerades as a ‘common-sense’ piece of legislation supporting ‘good’ lawmaking. This is thin disguise for its actual purpose, which is to constrain the government from acting in our collective interests as citizens, including by taking much-needed measures to protect our environment.

The disingenuousness of the stated intent of the bill is demonstrated by the recent lawmaking activities of the bill’s architect, David Seymour, whose Act Party last month introduced amendments to the Pay Equity Act, in a legislative process that breached two of the Bill’s own ‘Principles of responsible regulation’ (see 8(a)(ii) and 8(i)): it was both retrospective and passed without even minimum consultation. This was justified on the basis that no property rights were at stake, only the rights of low-paid, mainly female workers to earn a fair wage for the critical services they provide New Zealanders. This reinforces the reality that the Bill’s primary purpose is to serve the interests of wealthy corporates and big business, not ordinary, hard-working New Zealanders

16th century philosopher Francis Bacon said that nature was a ‘common harlot’ and should be subdued by man. He implored budding capitalists to ‘bind her to your service and make her your slave.’ It is striking that just as wealthy British slave owners were compensated for giving up their property rights over enslaved humans, this Bill proposes compensating polluters for giving up property rights to exploit and pollute nature.

Critically, the Bill aims to limit the state’s ability to act to protect our natural environment from further harm from corporates and individuals who profit from the exploitation of our shared inheritance – our land, our rivers and lakes, our oceans and our atmosphere. One powerful mechanism for achieving this is its provisions enabling polluters to seek compensation for reducing the harmful effects of their activities, on the grounds that it diminishes their property rights (8(c)(ii)). This has disturbing historical precedent in the huge sums of money paid to slave-owners on the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1833, compensating for the loss of these wealthy individuals’ property rights (over enslaved human beings) – a debt that British taxpayers only finished paying off in 2015. As in Britain, the cost of this compensation will ultimately fall on New Zealand citizens as taxpayers and ratepayers, and is likely to have a severe chilling effect on government at all levels, which, due to the heightened risk of litigation and liability for compensation, will become reluctant to create or enforce environmental regulation.

This Bill comes at a time when we should be strengthening our protections for the environment not weakening them. Our country and planet face a polycrisis of climate heating, ocean acidification, biodiversity collapse, deforestation, soil depletion, and polluted oceans, land and freshwaters. As national and global citizens, we have fallen woefully short of our responsibility as stewards of our shared inheritance, and this bill seeks to establish a regime in which the government will do much less, with the primary purpose of enabling the private enrichment of those who already monopolise much of the country’s wealth, land and other resources.

This Bill has been rejected three times by Parliament on the basis it was unnecessary, and its costs significantly outweighed any claimed benefits. Nothing has changed, except that the stakes are even higher: the state of our biosphere is even more dire and the need to act more urgent than ever before.

Please don’t be responsible for passing a law that elevates private wealth accumulation above the collective interests of New Zealanders – both current and future generations.

To reiterate, and for the reasons set out above, I oppose this Bill.

Dr Catherine Knight