ACTs Regulatory Standards Bill greatest win for neoliberalism since Roger Douglas
The Regulatory Standards Bill represents the greatest trojan horse for corporate power in NZ Political history.
It will allow corporations to vet legislation using a very narrow libertarian interpretation of property rights over human rights.
It is dangerous and will have an immediate strangulation on democracy.
The extreme right want these powers to stop environmental legislation from catching up to their climate changing crimes.
Just so we are clear.
The Consultation time for a law as enormous as the Regulatory Standards Bill had a tiny window open over the holidays, and of the 20 000 submissions, barely .3% agreed with it!
Submitters oppose David Seymour’s regulation law. Why he’s charging forward anyway
David Seymour is intending to turn “up the heat on bad lawmaking” with a new piece of legislation outlining principles of good regulatory practice and establishing a board to keep politicians accountable for any red tape they impose.
A discussion document on the proposal drew significant attention over summer, pulling in more than 20,000 submissions. It coincided, however, with Seymour’scontentious Treaty Principles Bill also being out for public feedback, itself receiving a record number of submissions.
A just-released summary of that feedback found 88% of submitters opposed the bill, with just 0.33% supporting or partially supporting it. The rest didn’t have a clear position.
…only .3% supported out because it is such an egregious abuse of democratic power in favour of corporate power!
It is Property Rights over Human Rights!
ACT have tailored an economic straight jacket that will make it impossible to counter corporate interests ever again.
Corporations will now be able to stop any environmental or taxation policy they don’t like.
The radical nature of this should terrify every New Zealander. It is a brake pedal for corporate interests and a gag for democratically elected change.
We require regulated capitalism not free market fantasies!
This is a blatant power grab by those fearful climate change will provoke electoral demands they don’t want to pay for!
Why on earth are we placing democratic break peddles on legislation the people have mandated by popular vote?
The Regulatory Standards Bill is an ideological vanity project…
While all the media and popular coverage seems to have been directed towards the Treaty Principles Bill, David Seymour and Act are poised to achieve another substantive victory that has been over 20 years in the making.
The Regulatory Standards Bill, first introduced to Parliament in 2006 and reintroduced last year by Seymour in his role as the Minister for Regulation, is under the public consultation phase (quietly started on the day of the arrival of the hikoi in Wellington).
It will be taken up by parliament in early 2025.
As detailed by Melanie Nelson, the passage of this bill (an agreement in the coalition Government’s negotiations) will help Act to realise a longstanding goal of their neoliberal policy agenda, which is to enshrine the rights of individuals, particularly property holders and business owners, over the collective good of all New Zealanders.
“The focus on the Treaty Principles Bill risks overshadowing its dull but dangerous cousin, the Regulatory Standards Bill, which is currently open for consultation,” she writes. “The Regulatory Standards Bill is the brainchild of the Business Roundtable (now the New Zealand Initiative) and has been attempted three times previously by the Act Party.”
If passed, the bill will establish a hand-picked regulatory board to ensure that law-making complies with its regulatory “principles” and to deal with complaints of violations (the public can even call in their complaints via a newly established tip line).
NZ’s crony under regulated capitalism is forever being deregulated by donors to the Political Right (and at times the Left).
ACT and National have gutted MBIE because MBIE employs the people who regulate New Zealand’s poorly policed and under regulated capitalism!
We see this time and time and time again, State regulators who are supposedly policing the under regulated markets with barely enough staff to look into anything at all!
ACT and National’s bullshit dismantling of Capitalism’s police while expanding Corporate power tells you all you need to know about the deregulated hellscape a National/ACT monstrosity wants to birth into this world!
Creating a Board of Corporate Warlords to vet all legislation to ensure it doesn’t impact their property rights is so crazy, why would you allow this to happen Kiwi?
Why must you squirm on the ground like a worm for corporate interests?
How much did you hate Jacinda to allow corporations to take over?
In 1943, NZ’s Ambassador to America, Sir George Laking, reflected on the surprising ability of the NZ Government to pass authoritarian powers against the citizens of NZ with little to no resistance from Kiwis by saying, “Much that was accomplished in those early years was possible only because of the absence of any detailed or sustained public interest in the issues”.
We have become experts in a hyper laid back culture of turning a blind eye.
You have become so easily led Kiwis, the right wing astro turf organisations use culture war issues to rage bait your petty bigotries into an ‘All Tribe No Village’ political landscape where they strangle the common good for their corporate masters interests and you are dumb enough to get played.
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Neoliberalism always wins.
The reason Winston has turned against the RS Act is because it will hinder him delivering for his donors, or at least make it more apparent.
Winston lies as often as he changes his incontinence diapers.
He voted for the Betrayal Act blaming the “coalition agreement”, and would defend it again if it meant keeping his, Jones and Costellos snouts in the trough, using the exact same excuse.
Electioneering platitudes from that’s man lips are worthless.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/116717926/editorial-poor-winston-peters-poor-us
Gosh I’m flattered yet again, thank you so much.
Neoliberalism never wins – because it never works.
A generation of NZers have suffered it, and only Douglas’s infernal patron has spared him the rope.
For the moment.
Neoliberalism works well enough for most people- that’s why political parties that want to be a government don’t change it much.
Neoliberalism works very well for the already rich.
Trickle up has created rapidly growing impoverishment, and now the middle classes are being affected, they in turn are becoming disillusioned.
Governments do what their donors want. The current one in NZ being a classic example of this. And the rich donors don’t want things changed.
Governments do what the majority of voters want. That’s how they remain governments.
If and when the electricity is working…
Love your perspective
For universal human rights to exist government red tape is required. In order to do that men are required to protect human rights. What The Regulatory Standards bill seeks to do is place corporate rights above those rights the rights of men. That’s not universal.