Regulation review doesn’t go far enough
The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants has welcomed Minister of Commerce Lianne Dalziel's efforts to improve
the quality of regulation in New Zealand, but says the Government needs to go further to do the job properly.
"It is a step in the right direction – but the most important review the Government could undertake is to look at the
process by which it makes its regulations in the first place," said Institute spokesman David Pickens.
Mr Pickens, the Institute’s Director of Government Relations and Strategic Projects, said that the Institute was
disappointed with the narrow scope of the review and urged the Government to be “more ambitious”.
"If the regulation-making process itself is not changed, the most that will come out of the Minister's review will be
short-term palliative changes, quickly swamped by poor quality legislation from the Government's regulation-making
apparatus," he said.
“Then in a couple of years we’ll need another regulatory review.”
An example of the burden imposed by regulations, pointed out by the Retailers Federation, are retailers who operate
under about 40 different acts of Parliament.
Mr Pickens said that without urgent action to stem the flow of “unnecessary and overly burdensome” regulation, New
Zealand risks losing an important advantage it has held for many years over its trading partners - the absence of
excessive red tape. “It is important that bold steps be taken to arrest the decline in New Zealand’s competitiveness
against other countries.”
In 2005 the Institute approached all political parties, and a range of business and non-business groupings, for their
views on a reform package to improve government’s regulation making. The results showed considerable appetite for a more
substantive review.
“It is important this opportunity for realising substantive and long-term benefits not be missed.”
Ends