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Better economic performance through better regulation

Wednesday 1 August 2012, 4:43PM

By Bill English

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A new system assessing the health of New Zealand’s regulatory regimes will help improve economic performance over the longer term, Finance Minister Bill English and Regulatory Reform Minister John Banks say.

The results of preliminary assessments are included in a report, Best Practice Regulation Model: Principles and Assessments, released on the Treasury website today.

“This new model for assessing major pieces of regulation considers whether each regime gives appropriate weighting to factors that can help improve economic performance - competition, innovation, exports, compliance costs and trade and investment openness,” Mr English says.

“This assessment shows a fairly good bill of health, but there are always areas where we can improve. The report identifies areas where further analysis may be warranted, and highlights work that is underway.

“Over time, the assessments will enable credible benchmarking of performance between regulations, helping to raise awareness, generate fresh ideas, and encourage debate,” Mr English says.

Mr Banks says improving the quality of debate about our regulatory systems will help the Government and industry work together in assessing the performance of New Zealand’s regulation.

“Without reasonably robust measurement, sustained performance improvement is hard to achieve.

“Our understanding of regulatory best practice will continue to grow through the evolution of the principles, the cycle of assessments, and resulting cross-agency and public discussion. Over time, this will help to support higher quality regulation.”

The report covers areas of regulation such as the Resource Management Act, the Commerce Act, prudential regulation and consumer protection regulation. Treasury will conduct another assessment in 2013.

The report is available at:

http://www.treasury.govt.nz/economy/regulation/bestpractice