Rejection of the RSB

Fighting back against the perverse influence of an outlier party of sociopaths

I want to record my opposition to the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill in its current form. I urge the writing committee to take the following into consideration.

‘The Regulatory Standards Bill’ currently being drafted by The Honourable David Seymour strengthens power, influence and financial supremacy in the hands of a small non representative body. The bill’s principles appear to favour individual (and corporate) property rights over equity, collective wellbeing, and environmental protections, and over te Tiriti o Waitangi and the New Zealand Bill of Rights.

The libertarian view of the world that proposes individuals be given unfettered access to do as and what they want, unencumbered by the constraints of being part of a society or community is an anti-social construct . John Donne when writing ‘No man is an island entire of itself’ recognised that each of us are part of something bigger than ourselves and that we owe allegiance to a common humanity.

The United States Senator, Elizabeth Warren is celebratory about business people who have done well, whilst instructing a caveat ‘You built a factory out there, good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads that the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.’

Capital does not create itself, it is the result of labour. Without the worker there can be no wealth, so any system or economy that degrades or undervalues the contribution workers make in the construction of a thriving economy is an inherently bad system.

The introduction of a monetarist policy, based on the economic theories of Milton Friedman, by Sir Roger Douglas in the late 1980’s has seen New Zealand subjected to a neo-liberal ‘trickle down’ economy that has seen an exponential shift of wealth away from wage earners and into the pockets of corporations, crown entities, shareholders, and business interests.

This doctrinaire approach has placed ‘the market’ and the pursuit of profit above all other considerations resulting in wage stagnation, the de-unionising of work places and lowering of conditions of service for employees.

The trend to devalue the contribution of labour has been exacerbated recently with the repeal of Fair Pay Agreements, rushed through under urgency by the Honourable Brooke Van Velden. A tragic end to a piece of legislation that represented the culmination of a life-times struggle by the unionist Helen Kelly to ensure that the contribution every working kiwi provides in the construction of a robust economy be recognised with a fair days pay for a hard days work.

Ms Van Velden’s legislation has been an assault on the primacy of labour and implies that the only limit on remuneration should be what ‘the market’ can get away with paying.

New Zealand has transformed from a compassionate society, that provided comprehensive access to affordable housing, free tertiary education, primary and tertiary health care, along with a robust ‘state award’ scheme, into a one where the individual no longer counts. Where every state action or provision has been judged on a cost benefit ledger and when found to be unprofitable, discarded or offered up for privatisation and exploitation.

Deregulation has been allowed to rule. Considerations for providing a cohesive and inclusive society where all people, but especially those in need, are supported in ways that allow every member to contribute to, and enjoy the benefits of, the communities they are part of, have been discarded as not cost effective in the new market reality.

New Zealand has seen closures to our industrial base as businesses and services moved off-shore to minimise wage debt and maximise profit. State owned assets have been broken up, with profitable sections, sold off to foreign interests who often stripped the resource of its profitability. The retention of these services as in the case of railways, for example, subsequently requiring new governments to bail out these industries with public funding, that had essentially become private businesses.

This ‘laissez faire’, market forces, monetary, ‘trickle down’ neoliberalism embraced by all governments in New Zealand since the replacement of the Robert Muldoon administration has resulted in appalling wealth differentials, social upheaval, along with the casualisation of the work force, reduced conditions of service and a callous disregard for the ordinary Kiwi battler. We have become entrenched as a low wage economy, where wages have stagnated for more than 40 years.

The nomenclature ‘Nanny State’ has been employed in dismissive, derogatory terms to signify a libertarian desire for minimal state intervention as business and corporate interests seek unfettered access to strip the country of every asset that can return a profit to the already rich, and often foreign interests.

Throughout this whole period there have been consistent hard fought struggles to place checks and balances in the way of unfettered attempts by capital to ride roughshod over workers rights, environmental concerns, issues of equity and a compassionate approach to wealth distribution, and obligations of honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

When considering the writing of this bill and its subsequent passage through parliament it cannot be ignored that agreement for such extreme libertarian policy is supported by only 8.6% of the electorate. This bill has far reaching implications not just for that very tiny minority, but for each and every New Zealand citizen and is a grossly undemocratic act for such a major law change.

The bill seeks to place individual rights and freedoms before all considerations for the collective well being of everyone or for environmental implications that could potentially strip future governments from exercising kaitakitanga over natural resources. It fails to recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi and will negate Māori Tino Rangatiratanga which guarantees them rights and collective ownership of their resources under the treaty.

To submit to the passage of this legislation in its current form is to ignore the consequences of what has been a ‘New Zealand Experiment’ in a failed ‘trickle down’ theory of economics as inconsequential. It is to embrace the obscene and growing gap between an elite with massive wealth and the rest of the country as acceptable, and to dismantle once and for all any recognition that Māori as co-signatory’s to Te Tiriti o Waitangi should have any claim to equity before the law. Most egregious of all it is to allow what is essentially an unrepresentative ‘outlier’ party to dictate the direction our country travels for the foreseeable future.

It represents a total abuse of the democratic process in New Zealand.