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Yesterday it was reported that Average salary David Seymour, the new Minister of Regulation, will receive an annual salary of $154,000. This is well above the public sector average salary of $82,000.
His department received about $80 million in funding and 91 staff in the previous year’s budget – including staff from the existing Treasury team. Private but taxpayer-funded schools, Seymour actually got about $230 million of taxpayer money to play with.
Not bad for a minority party that received about 8% of the vote.
But behind the excessive waste of taxpayers’ money, there are more important aspects of the regulatory department that need to be focused. In Seymour’s own words, he hopes that the regulatory department will become a regulatory giant, on par with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Seymour quoted Ruth Richardson’s Financial Reform as an example of the lasting change he hopes to introduce.
You see, his department not only has to conduct a “regulatory review” to eliminate “red tape” (slogan in conservative newspapers and politicians), it also seeks to define the “quality” and standards of New Zealand regulation – the rules and laws that govern our country.
Two aspects stand out in particular when Seymour assesses what constitutes “high-quality” regulation: the market is key, and letting voters decide.
Seymour:
“In a way, this (the ministry) is a big exercise in getting voters to identify bad legislation so we can stop it, remove it, repeal it, so people can spend more time doing transformation activities.”
“New laws, new regulations should be tested by the question: Can we define the real problem that we are trying to solve here?
Specifically, is there a market failure?
More specifically, can we see outcomes where the game theory results are not biased at all?”
Seymour even wants to become the arbiter of how the government develops regulatory impact statements, including its consultation process:
Seymour:
“The agency that made the proposal, perhaps the environment ministry, still has an obligation to conduct a regulatory impact analysis of its move, if you will. However, the role of the regulatory department is to perform quality assurance and effectively act as a maintainer.”
and
“Then once we define (Appropriate Regulatory Impact Analysis) We’ve narrowed it down and what it really means, Enforce higher standards, including consultation.”
Seymour intends to roll out his “quality assurance” and “standards” across all departments, across the New Zealand government.
Seymour knows the next election is only about two and a half years away, so he is moving fast to pass the Regulatory Standards Act, which he says will allow voters to decide what is good regulation and what is bad regulation, and to appoint and train a government team that shares his philosophy.
Seymour promoted populist rhetoric, arguing that the people should make the decisions. Populism has worked well for many politicians around the world, bringing it to the people. AKA Brexit, and get people motivated to vote while throwing marketing slogans and out-of-context data points at them to fuel their enthusiasm.
but Attack Expert, Always ignore experience and adviceAnd pursue slogans and emotions Beyond research and evidenceSeymour and the government reveal New Zealand’s deep hypocrisy and worrying embrace of populism.
Populist states help politicians gain power, but inevitably impose huge social costs on their citizens and the environment.
This year, at the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, Seymour insisted that there was no problem with the passage of many laws. He claimed that he was the right person to address them. He asked:
Can we define a practical problem we are trying to solve here?
Yet Seymour’s entire record looks like it was designed to address issues and laws that didn’t exist—“Do as I say, not as I do.”.
Take Seymour’s Treaty Principles Act. Given Luxon and Peters Already announced It’s dead when it shows up, so why waste a lot of time, money, energy and attention trying to fix the problem it created in the first place? Although to be fair, the Iwi problem is a long one. For foreign mining companies Maybe that’s the real point. here.
Seymour is good at creating artificial problems –
Former ACT staffer Grant McLachlan said the ACT weaponised groups that pretended to be concerned about citizens but actually promoted the interests of big companies.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance “did a lot of groundwork” for ACT in the 2020 election through its Affordable Housing Campaign.
“This is actually a deliberate problem that the PAP has caused them to create.”
In summary, Seymour’s spending of $230 million of taxpayers’ money was a good outcome for him, but not for our services and society – especially at a time when the Government is making deep cuts to health, police, Aboriginal affairs, justice, food banks, social services and more.
More importantly, Seymour’s positioning of his cabinet as one of the three pillars of New Zealand’s future laws and regulations, alongside the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Treasury, is worrying – especially as he calls the shots as an arbiter, viewing “the market” as the supreme force. It is deplorable that Luxon has allowed a minority government to take power.
This is an excerpt from Shan Tui: David Seymour’s slush ministry hides greater risks
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