David Seymour introduced the Regulatory Standards Bill to make rules and regulations more transparent. Photo: RNZ
An estimated annual cost to government of $50-60m from the Regulatory Standards Bill is outdated, an official statement shows, but a change that revised that cost down is expected to be at least partly reversed.
This week, RNZ revealed MBIE officials feared the Regulations Ministry's estimate of $50-60m a year was on the low end.
That estimate was included in a draft version of the ministry's regulatory impact statement (RIS) sent out for agency consultation. The final version released in May put the expected cost at closer to $18m a year.
In a statement on Friday, which included a timeline, the Regulations Ministry said the higher figure was based on an earlier version of the bill that would have required a full review of all existing laws - both primary (statutes) and secondary (regulations) - within 10 years.
That proposal was later scrapped.
The timeline
- On 28 February, after the Minister's consideration of feedback from the public consultation process and decision to proceed on the basis of a substantially similar proposal to the one in the discussion document, we recommended to the Minister that work should proceed on the basis that all secondary legislation should be excluded unless brought in via notice. At this point, there was no mention of a 10-year deadline for agencies to review (because this was not part of the proposal in the discussion document).
- The Minister considered that briefing and decided that all secondary legislation should be included by default, unless excluded by notice. He also instructed MfR (Ministry for Regulation) to proceed on the basis that reviews of existing legislation would all need to be completed within a 10-year time-frame.
- On 11 April, following Ministerial consultation on the subsequent draft Cabinet paper, which included both those proposals, the Minister decided not to proceed with the 10-year timeframe, and to exclude existing secondary legislation, but include all new secondary legislation.
As it stands, the bill would require all new legislation to be assessed against the "good regulation" principles - with some exceptions.
It also requires ministries to regularly review the existing primary legislation they are responsible for, but does not set a specific timeframe. Existing regulations are currently exempt from review.
The lack of a specific timeframe reduces the pressure on agencies to complete these reviews so quickly and excluding existing secondary legislation also significantly reduces the workload, which explains the cost reduction to about $18m.
However, the current RIS also notes the minister is expected to make some secondary legislation subject to the RSB in future.
"Existing secondary legislation is initially not in scope by default, with the expectation that some classes of secondary legislation will be brought in (via a Notice) at a later date."
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