Brian Easton: Do We Want A Regulatory Standards Act?

The ACT party election manifesto will propose to introduce a Regulatory Standards Act to set a higher bar for new regulation, and test regulations against the key principles of the Regulatory Standards Act.

To make my position clear I have had doubts, going back to Muldoon’s time in the 1970s, about the casual way we introduce regulations. Since then we have made a number of improvements to how they are introduced. But I am uneasy about the proposed legislation; at the very least, I think it requires a wide public debate before it is enacted.