Heather Roy screams triumphant at the passing of the Regulatory Improvement Bill last week:
Last week our longstanding Regulatory Responsibility campaign moved forward another step with the passing into law of ACT Leader Rodney Hide's Regulatory Improvement Bill. Its predecessor, the Regulatory Responsibility Bill, was first introduced to Parliament as a Private Members Bill in Rodney Hide's name. That Bill sought to reduce the amount of legislation and ensure that new laws are relevant and effective. It proposed a regular review of all legislation to ensure it is still relevant, and a test for new laws through simple questions: what is this law for? What will the cost of implementing this law be? What are the unintended consequences likely to be?Except that the Regulatory Improvement Bill has nothing to do with the Regulatory Responsibility Bill. The latter is a constitutional change requiring all laws to conform to some highly contentious Libertarian dogma - a bill of rights for the rich. The former is a collection of minor tweaks to legislation aimed at streamlining regulation and reducing compliance costs in various areas. It's not even an ACT bill - it was originally introduced by Lianne Dalziel.
So, is Heather Roy so clueless that she does not know what legislation she is passing? Or does she merely think that ACT members are?
