An utter shambles II

Two weeks ago, the regime rammed through its deeply unpopular Regulatory Standards Act, imposing a radical Libertarian ideological straitjacket on all future actions by the New Zealand state. Just two days after voting to pass it, NZ First was promising to repeal it (or maybe not). And now, National is saying they might campaign on repealing it as well:

The National Party could join coalition partner NZ First and campaign on repealing the Regulatory Standards Act at the next election, deputy leader Nicola Willis says.

This is despite the law, which was pushed by the Act Party during coalition talks, being less than a month old, and having been passed into law with votes from both National and NZ First.

Speaking to Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills on Newstalk ZB, Willis said National had not “come up with what our party position will be after the election”.

“We haven’t ruled out repealing it either. We haven’t taken a position yet, but it’s not impossible that we would go to the campaign trail saying, ‘yes, we met our coalition commitment, we supported that into law, but actually we agree with the concerns of some people, it hasn’t operated as we’d hoped and we want to repeal it’.

“We haven’t come to a position yet, but we haven’t ruled it out.”

So we have a regime effectively campaigning against its own legislative program. I just don't have the words for this.

What I do have the words for is how utterly wasteful this is. The regime spent a year developing this law. It then put it out to public consultation in November last year, got 23,000 people telling them it was a stupid idea, ignored them, and sent it to parliament, where 159,000 people repeated the message. National ignored all those people and passed it anyway. They have wasted the time of public servants, MPs, and the public, at huge expense to everyone. So next time they talk about "waste" or "cost-cutting", we can all remember how they created a whole new ministry to develop and pass a law which they now promise to repeal.

I suppose it is good that National has finally listened, albeit far too late to do any good. But if they think any of the people who they ignored and derided will vote for them for this, I think they are doing an unpleasant bodily function metaphor in an uncomfortable place. As with Winston, only a fool would trust them to do what they say they will - on anything! If you want this dogshit law gone, better to vote for a party which has opposed it all along. Better to vote to throw this entire regime into the sea.