GUEST BLOG: Tadhg Stopford – Welcome to the Ritual of Reform / the sacrifice of the public /What is the Regulatory Standards Bill?

Welcome to the Ritual of Reform / the sacrifice of the public /What is the Regulatory Standards Bill?
Magic, as we know, is done with spelling. That is why the ancients tell us that Satan is lies. Because words literally make meaning.
 That is why our untrustworthy politicians and the junk tanks that feed them policy are so poisonous. Because we do not understand what webs of deceit they weave. We just feel the struggle, as we are entrapped and bled over time.
The RSB is just such a piece of black magic.

At face value, the Regulatory Standards Bill proposes to embed “principles of good lawmaking” such as clarity, predictability, and respect for property rights.
Sounds reasonable?

It proposes introducing a non-binding Regulatory Standards Board to assess whether new or existing laws comply with these principles.

It seeks regulatory impact statements and declarations of consistency with these standards.
So. On the surface: It sounds a technocratic effort to ensure quality legislation.
The reality is that it’s a nasty and dangerous piece of work.
Because it introduces a soft constitutional override, establishing corporate profits as a superior test of lawfulness — potentially subordinating democratic mandates, social policy, Treaty obligations, or ecological regulation to a utilitarian economic filter.
Ie. it’s a Pfizer first, or Monsanto majority bill.
The bill doesn’t directly repeal any law. But it delegitimizes and delegitimates regulation not founded on pro-market metrics. It eliminates the public interest.
This is, let us be honest, a direct attack on democracy. On each of us
*It is a direct attack on the will of the people*
*It is a direct attack on the ability of our nation to make sovereign decisions in the national interest*
It is a priestly (legalese) spell designed to make surrender (or sale) look like order.
Because once you peel back the language of “efficiency” and “good law-making,” here’s what you find.
Laws that protect land, people, or public goods? Deemed risky.
Laws that recognize collective rights or Treaty obligations? Flagged as inconsistent.
Laws that rebalance power away from capital? Challenged, delayed, or buried.
And most critically — it reclassifies people as persons under a legal fiction that dissolves human sovereignty into corporate abstraction.

Read that again, then, please, go on.
Under the RSB, the term “person” replaces “people” in assessing regulatory impact.

This is not innocent legalese.

 It is the elevation of entities over citizens — where corporate ‘persons’ are treated as equal (or superior) to living, breathing New Zealanders.
This sleight of language shifts our legal footing. It can reconsidered a form of enslavement.

We will be transformed from a society of sovereign citizens, to a market of actors.

Each of us legally indistinguishable from a multinational corporation.

 The rights of the living will be debated on the same plane as the entitlements of Shell, BlackRock, or Pfizer.

This opens the door to many bad things.
Like,
Corporations demanding Treaty rights while denying their obligations
Private entities challenging environmental and social regulation on the grounds of “equal treatment”
The erasure of tangata whenua under the guise of universalism (this in turn will open Nz up for total privatisation)
This isn’t governance. It’s compliance theatre for a dying ideology. It’s about as family-friendly as a paedophile on a meth binge in a boarding school. Fuck these people.

These corporate shills masquerading as “representatives of the public interest” are simply corporate whites selling us out. On our dime.

Their treason is how corporate ‘persons’ are set to gain more rights than natural ones.  just ask any iwi battling foreign water bottlers who take billions of litres (esesntially for free) how cool that is. It’s not cool. It’s stink. Super stink.
But the ‘New Zealand Initiative’ says, ‘nothing to see here’.
Because that what their donors want.
This is strategic incompetence as cover for capture. It has profound implications for institutional shifts.
By embedding neoliberalism (aka fraud and theft) in Law, the RSB mirrors the agenda of James M. Buchanan (horrible man) and the Atlas Network (horrible people) to permanently insulate markets from democratic interference by embedding pro-property, anti-tax, anti-redistribution norms into governance.

Think of it as a stealth constitution for capital.
Constitutions are more important than most kiwis know.

Which is fair enough, given we don’t really have one for ourselves in a useful sense.

(I know I know, te tiriti, but; it’s complicated$)
Once passed, no law – even one elected with overwhelming public support – would be deemed “sound” unless it fits a set of biased criteria (economic efficiency, minimal intrusion, private rights supremacy).

(See what I mean? Te tiriti gets ignored all the time)
So, the RSB is Privatization by Delegitimization. Sneaky ae?
But the real power lies in what the bill delegitimizes
Eg Any regulation that restricts market actors “unnecessarily”
Any law that prioritizes collective good over individual autonomy
Any Treaty-based claim that rebalances control over land, water, or taonga (energy is a taonga of relevance, gold too).
This renders public interest law structurally “non-compliant,” even if it’s democratically enacted wtaf?!
It’s regulatory chilling in slow motion.
It’s a heist. Another one. By politicians with no mandate to sell us out. Again.
Let’s name the game folks, the political class in New Zealand – like much of the West – no longer governs. It manages decline on behalf of capital. They are liquidators, not leaders.
They are stooges.
Thus, they perform a strange, fragile dance.
They pretend to act – but only within frameworks dictated by the market.
They pretend to care – but only in language, not law.
They pretend to lead – while outsourcing all real power to unelected boards, foreign investors, or global creditors.
The Regulatory Standards Bill is the manual for that performance.

It codifies strategic incompetence as the gold standard of modern politics.
“We’d love to help you… but the regulatory standards say we can’t.”

The poor things.
This is not failure.
This is design. It is legislative cowardice and treason disguised as process.
It’s the public disarmament of Parliament as a toll of public service in a world growing darker by the day.
Do you trust the Winebox crew to run the country? I don’t. These pricks couldn’t lie straight in bed.
But here they come again, and this is their money shot, and it’s aimed at all of us.
Its institutional capture without formal overthrow. Again .
This isn’t a coup. Wait. No, it is. It’s banana republic stuff. Forget the company store. Welcome to the company nation.
 Like Rogernomics, the RSB is a ‘Structural Adjustment Program’ of the kind normally forced on nations by the IMF or World Bank.

Once again though, we have it forced on us by those entrusted to protect us from this kind of shitfuckery. Life. So ironic. So rapey.
The new Regulatory Standards Board won’t strike down laws – but its existence will be used by lobbyists, courts, think tanks, and corporate media to
Pressure lawmakers
Mount legal and PR challenges
Stall reform through procedural warfare
This is how a small elite vetoes democratic sovereignty without violence.
What will this sets in motion? It seems obvious to ensure the further decline of New Zealand via The Permanent Market Primacy of Greed, because the RSB encodes the moral supremacy of ‘markets’ into statute.

Over time, this will inevitably lead to the ‘re-education’ of civil servants and lawmakers into market-first thinking, and the transformation of Parliament into a performance space for symbolic democracy.

While real limits are drawn by economic tribunals, reports, and regulatory scorecards.
It will also have a chilling effect on any redistributive or ecological regulation.
So, it seems clearly lawfare as corporate class war. Is this how the dream of NZ as a sovereign egalitarian nation finally dies? Not in fire.

In forms.
In frameworks.
In non-binding principles enforced with total obedience.
Paid for by corporations. Written up by junk tanks. Passed into law by prostiticians.
The Regulatory Standards Bill is exactly what you’d expect from a post-sovereign government in a decomposing West.
Too captured to protect its people.
Too cowardly to defy its funders.
Too proud to admit it has become a vassal state – a colony not of another nation, but of global capital itself.
Too privileged and ignorant to acknowledge reality.
Just as Europe gutted its manufacturing base to serve the euro, and America sacrificed its workers for Wall Street, Aotearoa now prepares to disable its own democracy – so that future governments cannot interfere with finance, property, or corporate power.
This is not a national policy.
It is an extractive, submissive, colonial protocol – one written by cowards, on behalf of kings they’ll never meet.
Hence, the it seeks to erode our indigenous and collective sovereignty.
Treaty-based claims that assert communal rights or stewardship duties are structurally incompatible with the bill’s individual-rights, property-maximizing framing.

You may not care about this. But assure you, it’s important.
Over time this will undermine tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) by declaring it non-compliant with ‘universal’ regulatory standards
It will pit Māori sovereignty claims against an artificial “neutral” standard that privileges Western property models
It will make Māori-led regulation (e.g. in fisheries, conservation, or water) more vulnerable to judicial or political challenge
This isn’t just a legal constraint — it’s a cultural reprogramming effort, and the Entrenchment of foreign finaincial influence.
It’s not a good thing.
Laws like RSB make New Zealand safer for
Private equity
(“Basically a total fraud” Warren Buffet)
Multinational agribusiness
(Monsanto/Bayer)
Foreign land and infrastructure investors
(profit parasites and tax avoiders)
Why?
Because once these standards are in place, future attempts to reassert national control over key industries, land, or resources will be framed as ‘unprincipled regulation.’
The RSB promises to cement investor confidence — at the cost of democratic self-determination.
The RSB won’t outlaw just laws.
It will delegitimize the imagination that made those laws possible.
That we might build affordable homes.
That we might own our own banks.
That we might tax the parasites and subsidize the healers.
That we might protect taonga over yield.
That we might honour Te Tiriti  -not as PR – but as living constitutional law.
These will all be reclassified as “regulatory risk.”
And so, the future itself becomes non-compliant.
In summary, the RSB is a Trojan horse of “Good Regulation”. It has death hidden in its belly.
It isn’t about improving lawmaking. It’s about redefining legitimacy in law.
It doesn’t protect freedom.

It prioritizes private capital like Hot money from abroad.
It isn’t democratic. It’s designed to outlast democracy.
Its deepest danger lies not in what it immediately does – but in what it prevents future governments from doing.
It is the soft capture of the state by private ideology – dressed as neutral reform.
Why is it being advanced by a junk tank (nzi) funded by corporations?
Why is it being advanced by political parties that stink of donor corruption?
For the best interests of New Zealand?
Yeah. Nah.
This is law by the Winebox crowd, for the Winebox crowd.
So what does a real national interest look like?

What does a post-captured state defend?

What Must Replace It?
A Sovereign, Strategic State
We are not calling for better bureaucrats.
We are calling for post-neoliberal, meritocratic leadership – based on strategic responsibility, not ‘ideological’ (corrupt) obedience.
That means leaders who prioritize strategic policies instead of corrupt ones.
Like, Regenerative national wealth (not speculative GDP)
And Energy independence (geothermal, solar, wind, battery sovereignty)
How about Strategic autonomy (food, finance, health, tech)
Maybe, like Norway, some Economic democracy (collective ownership and control of the means of production)
Or, crazily, some Public dignity (housing, education, water, nutrition – not as markets, but as rights.
Warren Buffett said it plainly: “Private equity? Basically a total fraud.”
Yet the RSB wants to elevate these parasites to legal parity with the people – our people – so we can be exploited.
A functional state would run defence and offence to protect our sovereignty and develop our wealth. But here in New Zealand? We seem so much more corrupt than people think.
Which is why we need to reclaim the Truth as our weapon
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell
So here is the truth.
This bill is not technical. It is tactical.
It is not about “good law.” It is about disabling the law as an instrument of justice.
It is not about helping Parliament. It is about hollowing it out so that its power can never again be used against the real rulers of the economy.
And it must be exposed.
It must be refused.
And it must be replaced — by a movement, and a generation, that remembers what sovereignty means.
Because let’s be real.
This isn’t good governance. It’s law by the Winebox crowd, for the Winebox crowd.
And they’re laughing at us — all the way to the bank.

Tadhg Stopford is a Historian and Teacher. Join him at www.thehempfoundation.org.nz