ACT Party leader David Seymour (file photo). Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
ACT Party leader David Seymour says his Regulatory Standards Bill will make it easier for voters to hold politicians to account.
The legislation would codify principles, such as personal freedoms and property rights, to guide the law-making process.
Advocates argue the change will lead to more transparency, while critics say it will simply bolster the protection of private property and wealth.
The bill, in various iterations, has been before Parliament three times, promoted by the ACT party, and has failed each time.
Speaking on Nine to Noon Monday morning, Seymour said he expected to take a paper to Cabinet within the next month.
Once the bill was drafted he hoped it would be introduced in the first half of this year and pass by the end of this year, he said.
Seymour said he was pushing for the legislation in the wider context of poor productivity growth and housing affordability that were driving young people out of New Zealand.
"I believe a large part of the reason for these problems is that we have got to a point where, in everyday life and in work, we spend too much time on what some people call transactional activity, that is getting permission to do work, verifying that work is being done, waiting for consents and so on, and not enough time and transformational activity that is actually producing the things you need."
Seymour said he had heard feedback to this effect from the early childhood education and finance sectors, pitching the Regulatory Standards Bill as a foundational piece of legislation to get things moving.
He compared his bill to the Public Finance Act, Reserve Bank Act and the Bill of Rights as significant pieces of legislation introduced in recent decades to guide good law-making.
"The thing about those pieces of legislation is that they do not, in themselves, prevent an elected government or Parliament from passing any law that they want.
"There is nothing to stop Nicola Willis, as the Minister of Finance, writing to Adrian Orr and saying, 'we're not so worried about inflation, just get those interest rates down, prime the pumps', she could do that, but she would have to do it in a very transparent way.
"The same with the Public Finance Act requires a whole schedule of public accounts to be published so that voters can make up their mind about whether the government is managing its finances responsibly."
Seymour said his Regulatory Standards Bill would be another "transparency mechanism" that would help the public hold politicians to account.
"It doesn't prevent politicians from making laws whose costs exceed their benefits or whose benefits and costs are very unfairly distributed against different citizens.
"It doesn't prevent politicians from impairing your property rights. It doesn't prevent any of that but it does provide a framework in which they're required to be transparent, and voters will be better equipped to make their judgement."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
