David Seymour has unveiled a report from his Ministry for Regulation showing there are 267 regulators across New Zealand, but offering no specific solution.
The Regulation Minister said the analysis shows a "twisted spaghetti of regulators who don't just cost money to fund, but suck up people's time and force others to give up completely".
But 43% of the regulators get no government funding, compared to 33% that are mostly government funded, and 19% funded mostly by fees and registrations.
The report also finds that other OECD countries typically face similar challenges.
The report maps out 96 in central government (36%), including 50 departments, 36 Crown entities, three departmental agencies, two non-Public-Service departments, a statutory corporation and three "others".
Meanwhile, there were 79 in local government (30%), including 61 territorial councils, 11 regional councils, 5 unitary councils, the Chatham Islands council, three Outlying Islands and the Department of Internal Affairs and Minister of Local Government
Additionally, there are 60 statutory bodies, committees and tribunals (30%), including 56 statutory bodies and four independent tribunals.
Thirty-two charities and companies hold regulatory functions (12%), including 29 companies or incorporated societies, two state-owned enterprises, and one statutory monopoly.
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The report found regulation was a core tool for managing economic, social and environmental outcomes, and most countries were responding to similar challenges around the design, coordination and maintenance of regulation over time.
"These comparisons do not provide a benchmark for the 'right' structure. Instead, they highlight how different design choices shape how regulatory systems operate in practice," the report said.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ministry for Regulation urged further work on defining the regulatory landscape, calling for a general effort to "understand"; "strengthen"; "reduce cumulative complexity"; and "reform".
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However, it "does not propose a single solution", stating that the "opportunity is to use this evidence to improve how regulation is designed, coordinated and managed over time", and that this is "easier to manage when the system is understood".
"It brings together information that has been dispersed across government agencies and datasets and provides a clear picture of New Zealand's regulatory landscape, for the first time. It does not assess individual agencies or propose specific reforms.
"Instead, it helps us understand how the system operates," the report said.
"There is no single 'right' model. Consolidation can reduce interfaces but can also increase internal complexity. Structural change alone does not resolve underlying challenges."
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The 63-page analysis includes 13 pages of appendices, like a three-page glossary, maps of the regulatory functions of the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment, and lists of the names of the country's regulators.
The day after the Government announced a push for more departmental amalgamations, the report also pointed to complexity specifically in "four multi-function agencies" - the Department of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
It also warns of a "high risk" the new mega-ministry for cities, environment, regions and transport would end up administering "outdated legislation", with 130 principal acts and a lot of secondary legislation, much of which has not been updated in the past 30 years.
Number of regulators 'not a problem in itself' - Seymour defends report
Seymour defended the report, saying it did add value because it was part of an overall goal of getting to a point where a person trying to do something could deal with just one regulator.
"None of that is possible if you don't first understand how many regulators there are, what they do, where the overlaps are, and sitting behind this report is quite a sophisticated database now that links together the regulatory agencies... the laws and the regulated parties.
"There's not a problem with the number [of regulators] in and of itself, but what the Ministry for Regulation have done is begun to map out how these different regulators overlap and how many regulators a person who wants to do something might have to engage with."
He pointed to the regulation of dogs, saying there were 11 laws and five regulators and suggested that could be simplified, making it easier for government ministers.
"When you have a problem, such as there's been some dog attacks recently, the minister sets out to try and fix that and change New Zealand policy towards that.
"I'm not saying he hasn't done a manful job of it under the circumstances, but you can't help but think his task would be all the easier if we had a more rational constellation of regulators and regulatory instruments."
He acknowledged many of the regulators - like the Dental Council, Nursing Council, Teaching Council and Law Society - were aimed at ensuring professional standards through registration, but said there were good reasons to change that setup.
"When you have a dozen different medical regulators all protecting turf, you may miss the point of protecting consumer or patient safety and instead have them captured by a particular profession."
He defended having set up the Charter School Agency, saying that it was "not a regulatory body", despite it being named in the report as one.
"This is not a proposition that we're going to eradicate everything in the report. In the case of the Charter School Agency, I would say that there is a specialist type of assessment of the outcomes rather than the inputs to a school, and in this particular instance, it makes sense to have a group of people off to the side of the Ministry of Education that specialise in that.
"They actually share most of their back-office activities, there's only one group of people that have to interact with them, so the kinds of duplication that we'd be concerned about don't exist in that case."
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