David Seymour doesn’t stick to his own standards of good regulation despite having a multimillion-dollar vanity ministry set up to do so.

“David Seymour has been busy throwing stones at other Cabinet ministers, such as Andrew Bayly, who seeks to bolster regulation of the supermarket sector. But he has failed to act on the advice his own Regulatory Impact Statement on the Treaty Principles Bill does not meet the very quality assurance criteria that he has oversight of,” Labour regulation spokesperson Duncan Webb said.

Good Regulatory Practice requires both that the nature of the problem is identified and that affected and interested parties are provided with appropriate opportunities to comment throughout the process.

“But his own Ministry of Regulation criticised the Treaty Principles Bill approach saying that full consultation is needed given the constitutional significance of this proposal and the impacts on the Crown-Māori relationship.

“David Seymour has also short circuited good regulation in his responsibilities for early childhood education (ECE), when he removed the need for ECEs to prove they had tried to find qualified teachers without obtaining stakeholder views beyond those offered proactively by some stakeholders.

“Consulting with ECE centre owners on teaching qualifications and failing to speak to parents, teachers, Māori/iwi is not putting children first and is a bad way to make law.

“In a similar vein, David Seymour’s ACT Party colleague Nicole McKee also fell afoul of the Ministry of Regulation when she loosened the rules for gun ranges. The Regulatory Impact Statement noted that no consultation was possible with parties other than the gun ranges themselves. Once again, it is bad law making and bad for public safety.

“The Ministry for Regulation is a joke if its own minister won’t stick to its rules, and his gun lobbyist colleague only talks to the very gun ranges that are regulated when loosening gun laws,” Duncan Webb said.

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