Regulation ministry launches tipline in search of ‘red tape horror stories’
A red tape tipline allowing the public to report their regulation “horror stories” has gone live amid the Government’s focus on what it claims are over-regulated industries.
Regulations Minister David Seymour, who is set to discuss the tipline in his speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce today, told the Herald the new ministry had received a flurry of reports from people about what he described as “rapid regulatory problems”, which had informed the development of the new tool.
He cited examples including the requirement to service fax machines despite their minimal use and the need to detect flour dust at bakeries “at a level that no machinery can actually detect”.
“These are just examples of things that people have come to us with, that we’ve been able to have some influence on fixing,” Seymour said.
The Nark line will be used by industry who want regulations taken down for their interest to be used as PR material for ACT.
Of course we don’t want a level of red tape that makes it impossible to do things, but we have regulation for a reason and ACT are pathologically against Government on principle.
The first thing we should complain about is ACTs Red Tape Palace that David has built using gold…
New ministry paying staff average salary of $150k despite public sector job cuts
The new Ministry for Regulation has more than 90 staff paid an average salary of more than $150,000, new figures reveal.
That is despite the coalition pledging to slash back-office spendingacross the public sector and attacking the former government for creating massive bureaucracies.
The anti-red tape department is overseen by ACT leader David Seymour, who secured its creation during coalition negotiations last year.
Figures obtained by the Green Party – and first reported by The Post – reveal a median salary at the agency of $154,500, well above the public service median of $84,800.
…This is just hilarious isn’t it?
ACT’s gold plated red tape vanity project is less a Ministry and more a Palace!
You get the feeling the canteen has sushi served on naked Japanese models, for a small Government Freedom Party, why do they have such a bloated red tape Chateau?
The hypocrisy of this is remarkable.
Taking from the poor, penalising beneficiaries and cutting public services while gouging on public money for your favourite vanity project.
It’s remarkable the priorities isn’t it?
It’s like the Treaty Referendum Bill, if NZF and National have sworn not to allow it to advance, then why spend all that money needlessly?
The things they can afford for them vs the things they can afford for us are vastly different.
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It’s probably worth remembering that regulation exists because neither the private sector, nor the public sector, can be trusted to act ethically, morally, or even legally correctly.
The last part of your comment describes the ACT party.
Lets talk about flour dust since David did. Recommendations, from Health and Safety bodies are that over an 8 hour shift bakers should be exposed to no more than an average of between 2 and 10 microgams of flour dust per cubic metre of air. Take a teaspoon of flour and divide it into 1,000 equal piles and one of those piles floating in each m3 is the gold standard for air quality in a bakery.
So, someone said to David’s Red Tape Ministry “This is dumb.” What is going to happen next? Do they treat this in isolation and decree that bakeries no longer need to test air quality in their workplace, or do they lower the standards to a more easily measured amount of flour dust, both of which make the bakery more hazardous for workers. Do they look at the whole area of dust in the workplace, from bakeries, timber processing, road works, quarrying, mining, asbestos. Dust, it turns out, is covered in Red Tape. Does the red tape inhibit business and lower productivity or does it protect workers.
A quick look at the Ministry of Regulation’s site shows not one reference to protecting either workers or the environment. Instead its function is to “support a modern, open economy” , to clear a pathway and eliminate barriers to enhance efficiency, to reduce costs to the economy and so on.
I sometimes take a supermarket baker home after his shift. He stinks of flour and my intake of second hand flour dust probably exceeds the recommendations. Seymour is not going to make this any better,
Good points Peter.
Leaky buildings ,,,, Pike River Mine,,,, Cave Creek platform ,,,, all from cutting or not enforcing regulations.
Denying Govt compensation and telling the victims family’s from the Pike River mine disaster, “to sue”, ,,, which the last NAct Govt did ,,, is an example of something which needs cutting.
If Sleazy Seymour cut his own bull-shit he’d become our first ever mute in parliament.
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