Four of Aotearoa New Zealand’s leading environmental organisations have today issued a joint open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, urging him to reject the Regulatory Standards Bill in full.

The Regulatory Standards Bill is being discussed in Cabinet on Monday, 19 May 2025.

The open letter, signed by the executive directors of Forest & Bird, Greenpeace Aotearoa, the Environmental Defence Society (EDS), and WWF-New Zealand, describes the Regulatory Standards Bill as "an unprecedented threat" to environmental protection, climate action, and the country’s democratic and constitutional foundations.

The organisations warn the Bill would create a dangerous new precedent where governments are expected to compensate companies if new environmental protections interfere with their property, effectively turning the polluters pay principle on its head.

--- Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon

Re: The Regulatory Standards Bill 

Dear Prime Minister, 

As leading environmental organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand, we are writing to express our deep concern regarding the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill. We strongly urge your Government to reject this bill in its entirety. 

The Regulatory Standards Bill poses a significant and unprecedented threat to New Zealand’s ability to respond to pressing environmental challenges, uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and maintain a functioning and responsive democracy. 

If enacted, this legislation would:

Impose financial penalties on environmental action, making it a new and unprecedented expectation that the Crown would compensate corporations when laws to protect nature or the climate affect the use or value of their property; 

Undermine environmental protections by prioritising individual freedoms and private property rights over the health of nature and the public interest; 

Establish an unelected Regulatory Standards Board, appointed by the Minister for Regulation, with the power to hear and amplify complaints from companies and pressure the Government over any policy inconsistent with a rigid set of principles. 

The bill also explicitly excludes Te Tiriti o Waitangi from its set of "good" law making principles. This risks undermining decades of progress towards incorporating Treaty principles into environmental governance and will likely result in legal confusion and uncertainty. 

The Ministry of Justice has already advised that the Bill fails to reflect the constitutional significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and is not aligned with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. 

The principles that all future governments would be required to consider under the Regulatory Standards Bill omit critical aspects of environmental stewardship, and elevate individual freedoms and private property rights above all other considerations. 

This ideology has no place in our legal system here in Aotearoa, where we have long valued fairness and collective responsibility rather than individual entitlement to harm nature or others under the guise of freedom. 

At a time of escalating climate change and declining biodiversity, this Bill would make it harder - not easier - for governments to act in the national interest. 

The Regulatory Standards Bill has been rejected three times before. We believe it should be rejected again. There is no public mandate for this proposal, and it is being advanced through a coalition agreement, not by popular demand or broad consensus. 

We therefore respectfully call on you to:

• - Reject the Regulatory Standards Bill in its entirety;
• - Commit to strengthening, not weakening, the Government’s capacity to address environmental challenges for the benefit of all people in Aotearoa and future generations; and
• - Reaffirm the importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in lawmaking and regulatory design.

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