David Seymour’s Ministry of Regulation costs $80mn

Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, August 22nd, 2024 - 17 comments
Categories: act, budget 2024, Christopher Luxon, david seymour - Tags: , ,

Yesterday, reports came out that the average salary for David Seymour’s new Ministry of Regulation was $154,000. That far surpasses the public sector median salary of $82,000.

His Ministry received funding of ~$80mn in the last budget and 91 staff – including from existing teams in Treasury. With that money, Seymour hired a CEO and 3 Deputy CEOs. The Deputy CEOs earn up to $348,000 each – more than Ministers.

Combined with his other pet project, private but taxpayer funded schools, Seymour essentially received ~$230mn of taxpayers money to play with.

Not bad for a minority party that got ~8% of the votes.

But hidden under the excessive waste of taxpayers money, there are more significant aspects to pay attention to in the Ministry of Regulation. In Seymour’s own words, he wants it to be a regulatory giant, on par with the RBNZ, and Seymour invoked Ruth Richardson’s finance reforms as an example of the lasting changes he wants it to introduce.

You see his Ministry is not only going to conduct “regulatory reviews” to eliminate “red tape” (a catch cry found in Tory papers and politicians), it also seeks to define the “quality” and standards of regulation in NZ i.e. the rules and laws that govern our country.

Two aspects stand out in how Seymour evaluates what is “quality” regulation – market is key, and allowing voters to decide.

Seymour:

“In some ways, this (Ministry) is a giant exercise in allowing voters to identify bad regulation so we can stop making it, so we can delete it, so we can get rid of it, so people can spend more time doing transformational activity.”

“New laws, new regulations, should be tested against questions like, can we define a real problem that we’re trying to solve here?

Specifically, is there a market failure?

And more specifically, can we see an outcome where the game theory outcome is not paranoid at all?”

Seymour even wants to be the arbiter over how Regulatory Impact Statements are produced in government, including their consultation processes:

Seymour:

“It remains the duty of the proposing agency, if you like, the Ministry for the Environment, perhaps, to carry out regulatory impact analysis on its initiatives. However, the role of the Ministry of Regulation is to do QA and effectively be the upholder.”

And

“And then once we’ve defined (proper regulatory impact analysis) and we’ve tightened up the scope of it and what it really is, enforce that it’s done at a higher standard, including consultation.”

Seymour intends to implement his “quality assurance” and “standards” across all Ministries ie. the entire NZ government.

Seymour knows he only has 2.5 years or so to go before the next election so he is moving at pace to pass a Regulatory Standards Bill that he says, will allow voters to decide on what is or is not good regulation. And appoint and train teams who share his ideology across government.

Seymour promotes a populist rhetoric that the people should decide. And populism has worked well across the world for many politicians i.e. bring it to the people aka Brexit, and let the people vote with energy as you throw marketing slogans and out of context data points to feed their fervour.

But by attacking experts, consistently ignoring experience and advice, and going for slogans and emotion over research and evidence, Seymour and the government reveals a deep underlying hypocrisy and concerning embrace of populism in NZ.

Populist countries help politicians gain power, but inevitably at a great social cost to its citizens and the environment.

At a Finance and Expenditure Select Committee this year, Seymour insisted that many laws were passed without a problem existing in the first place. He claimed he was the right person to fix it. He asked:

Can we define a real problem that we’re trying to solve here?

Yet Seymour’s entire record looks like one of contriving problems and laws that don’t exist – “do as I say, not as I do”.

Take Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill for example. Given Luxon and Peters already announced it is dead on arrival, why waste significant time, money, energy and focus over a contrived problem he created in the first place. Although to be fair, Iwi has been a long standing problem for foreign mining companies and perhaps that’s the real point here.

Seymour has form on creating contrived problems –

ex-Act staffer Grant McLachlan said ACT weaponised.. groups that masquerade as concerned citizens but actually push the interests of large corporates.

The Taxpayers Union “did a lot of the groundwork” for the Act Party in the 2020 election campaign through its Campaign for Affordable Housing.

“It was actually a contrived problem that the Act Party told them to create.”

To summarise, Seymour’s $230mn of taxpayer money is a good result for him but not so much for our services and society – especially as the government cuts deeply into health, police, Oranga Tamariki, justice, food banks, social services etc.

More significantly, Seymour’s positioning of his Ministry as one of the three future pillars of laws and regulations in NZ, besides the RBNZ and Treasury, is alarming – especially when he dictates it on terms that he is the arbiter of, and one which places the “market” as a supreme force. Luxon allowing a minority government to rule the roost is pitiful.

This is a shortened excerpt from Mountain Tui: David Seymour’s Ministry of Slush Hides Far Greater Risks

17 comments on “David Seymour’s Ministry of Regulation costs $80mn ”

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  1. Mike the Lefty 1
    22 August 2024 at 1:20 pm

    It would be better named The Ministry of Jerks.

    • Tony Veitch 1.1
      22 August 2024 at 4:39 pm

      Or the Ministry of Perks!

      I wonder how many of these civil servants are members of the ACT party?

      • Graeme 1.1.1
        22 August 2024 at 5:04 pm

        And whether they were recruited from within the Public Service, or were outside hires, and then from where and by who?

        Can see lots of ways this could turn a bit messy

  2. adam 2
    22 August 2024 at 3:58 pm

    Seymour believes in game theory as social policy – pseudo intellectual much.

    • Mike the Lefty 2.1
      22 August 2024 at 6:05 pm

      The "Ministry of Regulations" sounds a bit George Orwellish to me.

      What powers does Seymour have?

      Can he ditch any regulation at will, or does he have to get Luxon to rubberstamp it?

      Can he make new regulations?

      Questions I am not sure have been answered.

      It sounds like he is accountable to no-one.

      Power hungry and dangerous, and allowed too much latitude by a weak figurehead only PM.

      Reminds me of when Peters was negotiating with both National and Labour after the stalemate 1996 election result. He went with National, despite abusing them continually during the preceding election campaign. Helen Clark's analysis: National went belly up.

      Same thing in 2023.

      • adam 2.1.1
        22 August 2024 at 8:27 pm

        Was wondering if Seymour needs his "Ministry of Regulations" so he can prove to the world he's not just a bit bloody normal.

        He really is no different from Stalinist fluffs who I met as kid. Don't get me wrong, I'm well sure he wants all the so called useless people dead. As rim only likes one freedom, and that's – "the freedom to do what ya told".

        act party, a con for the country, since inception.

  3. feijoa 3
    22 August 2024 at 4:04 pm

    Excellent article, thank you.

    David Seymour is a very dangerous man.

    And, as usual, the natural world will have no voice in this crazy 'there is no such thing as society' planet he lives on.

    • Ngungukai 3.1
      23 August 2024 at 5:17 pm

      Especially when he is being advised by Roger the Rat, Dick Preeble and, Sir Allan Gibbs and his daughter who are active participants in the Atlas Group and the Mount Perelin Society ????

  4. Incognito 4
    22 August 2024 at 4:46 pm

    Mean and median are different things.

    Anyway, at that salary it will be hard to find an ‘emotional junior staffer’ to blame for anything.

  5. Patricia Bremner 5
    22 August 2024 at 5:16 pm

    If they are receiving Public funds, we should know who they are. What are their work histories and beliefs. It is a question of who regulates the Regulators? If it is Seymore that is sooo wrong.

      • Tiger Mountain 5.1.1
        23 August 2024 at 9:17 am

        Jeezus…Moss again…these people that have shat upon working class people from a great height but always happy to take taxpayer dollars.

        The smirking twat from Epsom has reduced school kids lunches from nutritious hot meals to dried out sandwiches–and really would like to eradicate them–sets up a highly paid circus essentially to plan more cuts to jobs and publicly owned infrastructure.

        “Incel Dave” is on the inside now and his Atlas Network is not going to waste the opportunity.

  6. Incognito 6
    22 August 2024 at 6:34 pm

    Seymour and has merry band of deregulators & disruptors could do a few things such as minimising the passing & repealing of Laws under urgency that circumvents proper review & consultation at Select Committee and improving the OIA process.

    In general, the transparency and accountability of this coalition government has been appalling. The Regulatory Impact Statements (RIS) are useful not only for decision and policy makers but also for the general public.

    The voters have a right to information and to consultation and they shouldn’t be fooled by ACT-sanctioned censorship.

  7. gsays 7
    22 August 2024 at 10:39 pm

    "…it also seeks to define the “quality” and standards of regulation in NZ i.e. the rules and laws that govern our country".

    Hopefully someone will submit the Treaty Principal Bill for strangling before any more precious taxpayer money is spent on it.

  8. Ngungukai 8
    23 August 2024 at 2:32 pm

    Sir Allan Gibbs and his daughter will be advising them what Policy they want along with the Atlas Group and the Mount Perelin Society. I am sure Sir Roger Douglas and Sir Richard Preeble will have their sticky little fingers in there somewhere ???

  9. TeWhareWhero 9
    25 August 2024 at 10:52 am

    "Is there is formal process for the re-cycling of these overpaid troughers?"

    Sorry, too polemical; start again.

    "Is there a formal process for the appointment these grossly overpaid Chief Establishment Opportunists?"

    Try again.

    "Is there a formal process for the appointment of these highly skilled leaders of commerce, industry and government …. who add no value whatsoever during their invariably obscenely overpaid and brief presence in a given enterprise before fucking off with an immense pay out to be recycled into another place at the trough via some old boys' network with its grossly inequitable system of shoulder tapping ….???"

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