The Regulatory Standards Bill has passed with the backing of the coalition parties.
National and New Zealand First agreed to pass the bill into law as part of their coalition agreements with ACT.
The bill has faced fierce pushback from the public, with more than 98% of public submissions opposed.
The legislation sets down principles for lawmaking which would not be enforceable in court but – if a piece of law would breach them – politicians would need to explain. It also sets up a Regulatory Standards Board which would assess current laws for their adherence to the principles.
Its critics say the principles are ideological, could favour big corporations, and would add delays and cost to lawmaking.
Changes were made to the bill after the select committee – but constitutional experts have warned the changes do little to address the bill's failings and the ideological way it's written mean it's unlikely to have lasting impact.
ACT leader David Seymour
The bill's primary champion, David Seymour, argued in his speech in the final reading in Parliament the legislation was about avoiding putting the costs of law changes on regular people.
"If you want to pursue some cause, then you need to be open about whether it is going to impact people's value that they get from their property and the value they get from their time," he said.
"The costs of the restrictions are immense and they are felt throughout our society," he said – giving the examples of teachers who he said complained they only ended up filling out forms and complying with bureaucracy, or builders who complained it took longer to get permission to build something than to actually build it.
"Where this bill leads us is a more respectful and more civilised society."
He said the bill's critics "have been many, but in my view poorly informed", arguing principles missing from the bill could still be pursued "through collective action".
"The point of the Regulatory Standards Act and its principles is to identify the costs of those laws and those collective projects on individuals."
In a statement after the bill passed, Seymour said it was a "historic moment" because politicians would not longer "be able to hide lazy thinking that piles regulatory costs on Kiwis".
"The high cost of regulation will be there for all to see, for each and every law. Over time, political pressure will reduce those costs," he said.
"Ultimately, this Bill will improve New Zealand's productivity. It ensures that regulated parties are regulated by a system which is transparent, has a mechanism for recourse, and holds regulators accountable to the people."
Repeal guaranteed – Labour
Labour's Justice spokesperson Duncan Webb promised Labour would repeal it within 100 days if it won the next election.
He said the bill's critics were "overwhelming" rather than "many", and the bill was wasteful and unnecessarily duplicated existing processes.
"It seeks to put in place a set of far-right values that come out of a theory of economics which basically says the most important right is the right to private property – it throws aside every other right we hold dear.
"What it amounts to is baking in a libertarian set of values into our lawmaking process .... yes, we can do it better – we can do better regulatory impact statements, we can do better departmental disclosure statements – but what we don't need is another piece of paper ... that public servants have to go and undertake."
He argued the bill would mean hand-picked public servants second-guessing the work of Parliament.
"This is the place for deliberation, this is the place for scrutiny, this is the place for examination – and to say that there is another group of people who you have no control over, unelected people, it's fundamentally undemocratic."
The final irony of the bill, he said, was that it did not follow the proper rules for lawmaking, with "deeply flawed and skewed" public consultation, a failure to consult Māori, and had a regulatory impact statement that fell short of Treasury's requirements.
"The idea that he stands up and says 'I've got this great piece of legislation about regulatory quality' when he doesn't follow his own rules about regulatory quality is outrageous."
The party's Deborah Russell said it was "odious" and again promised to repeal it within 100 days of the next Labour government.
Cockroaches and rats – Greens
Green MP Tamatha Paul said the bill was like a cockroach – "we keep stamping it out but it just won't die".
"They tried this three times before ... and every single time it failed. They tried it again with the Treaty Principles Bill and what happened with that ... it got chucked in the bin.
"The danger in this bill is not actually in how damaging it will be ... the danger of this bill is how eyewateringly boring and technical it is so that most of the general public aren't necessarily paying attention to the consequences.
"That's how a cockroach lives, isn't it – in the dark, in the night, not in broad daylight being clear about the intentions of what they hope to achieve.
"Or maybe it's like a rat ... you see one, you think that's it, there's 20 more where that came from."
She said the bill's intention was erasing the Treaty of Waitangi, ransacking the environment, and putting corporate greed over the public good.
Paul criticised the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, saying he did not understand what he had signed up to.
"Maybe he should just stick to business because he's not a very good politician.
"This is capitalism, and this is recolonisation. The people who engineered this bill don't care about New Zealand ... and David Seymour you'd better run and tell your mates in the Atlas Network that we're going to burn capitalism to the ground because socialism is about honouring and upholding the dignity of all people."
National congratulates ACT
National backbencher Cameron Brewer spoke for just over a minute, congratulating the ACT Party for its 20-year effort to get the bill over the line.
"We heard approximately 30 hours of oral evidence and received 159,000 written submissions, and of course that was on top of over 23,000 submissions last year after considerable departmental consultation."
He pointed to the amendments to the bill that resulted from the select committee process.
'Context and fact' – NZ First
New Zealand First frontbencher Casey Costello said she was bringing context and fact back to the "very emotional debate".
"The principles of socialism as we've heard so many times before is, the trouble with it is, you eventually run out of other people's money."
She said the bill fundamentally promoted accountable and open government and promoted the rule of law, efficiency in regulation, property rights, an independent judiciary, and equality before the law.
Her speech was also kept short at just over a minute.
Righteous, burning anger – Te Pāti Māori
Te Pāti Māori co-leader recalled the hikoi protesting the Treaty Principles Bill a year ago, and "our righteous burning anger, the fire in our puku, as we shook the very foundation of this house and the world with a haka".
He said it was a declaration of resistance in the face of a pattern that appeared again and again.
"First comes the land is scorched, the system thinks it has burnt us out – and yet the pou remain, the stories remain, the people remain. And so when I look at the Regulatory Standards Bill, I see it for what it is: another fire ... the cold, calculated arson of a government that wants to burn down the constitutional protections that stand between our people and exploitation.
"Today as this government tries to pass a law to forget us, we stand again to remember. We remember that Te Tiriti is our standard, our covenant, our fire that does not go out."
He said the bill may pass in the House today, but it would not survive the people tomorrow – and an Aotearoa hou would be built "not on the scorched earth of deregulation, but on the enduring fire of Te Tiriti o Waitangi".
Māori Development Minister 'didn't know it was happening today'
Heading into the debating chamber, Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka said he was unaware the bill's third reading was set down for later in the day.
"Didn't know it was happening today but it was foreshadowed through a coalition agreement, it's happening today and I'm sure Minister Seymour will carry it through."
He acknowledged it was a big deal to Māori, but it was among "a lot of confronting challenges in front of us right now, and the most important of which is the cost of living and the economic challenges".
He said he hoped the passing of the bill would lead to improved regulatory oversight without being overbearing – but asked if he expected that would be the case said he did and that's what it had been set up to do.
"And if it isn't, well, we're going to have to look at it again."
Asked if he welcomed the bill, he said "oh, no, I support the coalition agreement and this has come out of the coalition agreement and I stand by Minister Seymour and others as a result of that".
Pushed on whether that meant he supported it, he only said "I'm willing to say that this is a bill the coalition agrees to, I'm part of the coalition, I'm part of the National Party, and we support this agreement.
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