Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good morning.

It’s a pleasure to speak with you about our country’s incredible potential. My comments focus on the Government’s work making it easier to do business by improving our regulatory settings.

You know New Zealand is small. From your flight here you know it’s distant. In fact, no Governments can control the size of their population or their geography, but they can control the quality of their public policy.

As Minister for Regulation and Associate Minister of Finance, my job is to ensure New Zealand has the regulatory settings to attract more investment and achieve higher productivity and living standards.

When I talk about regulatory settings, I mean the rules that government puts in place that restrict the use and exchange of private property. That is distinct from government’s other roles, which include spending to produce goods and services, and ownership of capital assets.

It’s this first area where I believe governments can make the most difference to encouraging investment, both domestically and from abroad. The foundation of a good regulatory system is secure property rights on a sound platform of the rule of law.

A recent edition of the Human Freedom Index rated New Zealand ninth out of 165 countries for its application of the rule of law. We were the highest ranked country outside of Western Europe, and ahead of Australia, the United States, Canada, and Great Britain on this score.

All Kiwis love beating Australia, at anything, such as when we got more medals per capita at last year’s Olympics in Paris. I may be unusual but I take particular pride in New Zealand being a freer society with sounder institutions than our neighbour, and indeed having some of the best institutions in the world.

We also have other attractions. A long history of stable democracy, being one of only seven countries to be democratic for the entirety of the twentieth century. We have a modern, open market economy. We have a highly skilled workforce, a stable political environment, and a government committed to making the necessary reforms to ensure long-term success.

We’re not kidding ourselves that that’s enough, however. As I said, sound property rights and a commitment to the rule of law, are only a foundation.

They get us to the starting line, but to win the race we must be better regulators, provide more certainty, and less red tape, making it easier to get a permit to use and develop your property so long as you are not doing harm to others or the natural environment.

That’s exactly the challenge our nation is now stepping up to meet, and it’s the commitment this Government is determined to deliver upon.

Overseas Investment Act changes

One critical area of regulation that I am responsible for is the consenting of overseas investments. Investment from overseas is fundamentally a win-win scenario. As Milton Friedman famously observed, the beauty of the free market lies in the fact that transactions only occur when both parties see mutual benefit. We agree. Investments into our country are, by definition, win-win.

We’re a growing nation and our businesses need capital to maintain our position as a first-world island paradise in the South Pacific. To do that, we are overhauling our regulation of overseas investment.

We’re creating a more efficient, growth-focused approach to attracting overseas investment with changes that will make it easier, quicker, and more transparent for foreign investors to invest in New Zealand businesses. I’ve seen first-hand the difference this makes to Kiwi businesses and Kiwi workers.

Not long ago, I visited two businesses in the same industry, on the same afternoon. Both companies had talented teams and great ideas. One, however, had access to overseas investment.

It meant that business had better machinery, tools that allowed their workers to be more efficient, more productive. It also meant they had access to valuable knowledge, expertise, and global networks that helped them market their product more effectively. It gave them the resources and know-how to scale, to innovate, and to compete at a higher level.

When workers have access to better tools and technologies, they become more productive. And when productivity increases, wages rise. Our country knows this deep down, and we are embracing the world as we seek to strengthen our connections through trade and investment.

Currently, our overseas investment regime processes about $19 billion in foreign investment each year. While this represents a fraction of the total foreign investment into our country, it captures major investments of significant value.

I want this number to grow, and I think there is desire out there to seize opportunities here.

But I’m aware that our existing screening regime has created barriers for potential investors. Our screening regime approves 98 per cent of applications. However, while many investments have little or no risk, investors must submit onerous applications demonstrating the benefits to New Zealand. That has made applications costly to prepare and time consuming to assess.

When I was put in charge of policy in this area fifteen months ago, I knew we needed change.

I found that two elected Ministers had to sign every consent, no matter how minor. Is it really a good use of time for two elected officials to sign off someone buying a paddock so they can plant grapes, because their passport doesn’t say New Zealand? I think we all know the answer, and that’s why I have delegated the majority of the decision-making to the regulator.

A minor thing, in the scheme of things, but it has sped up consents by several weeks and shows our direction of travel. The regulator now has the power to speed up decision-making, balancing the need for careful risk management with the urgency of encouraging more investment into New Zealand.

That change was part of a new Ministerial Direction letter with a range of simplifying measures. I’m pleased to say it was half the length of the one my predecessor wrote.

Since these changes were implemented, over 90 per cent of the consent applications received and processed have been decided in less than half the seventy-day statutory timeframe. This is a huge win for efficiency but it’s the only the start of the improvements we’re making.

We have made every change possible within Parliament’s current law, the Overseas Investment Act, so now we’re changing the law itself.

We’re undertaking a full review of our Overseas Investment Act, with an aim to make our investment regime even more investor-friendly while ensuring we continue to protect New Zealand’s long-term interests. The new regime will operate with a presumption in favour of foreign investment, acknowledging the significant benefits it can bring to our economy. Our intention is to introduce the law to Parliament in May and pass it into law by the end of the year.

Most critically, the changes will revise the presumption in the Act that it is “a privilege for overseas persons to own or control sensitive New Zealand assets” for asset classes other than residential land, farming, or fishing quota.

Removing the need to justify a privilege will simplify the consenting process. The process will instead focus on whether the investment might do harm to others or the environment that is not managed by our domestic regulations. It will create a two-track consenting regime, dependent on whether such risks are apparent.

For investments that are not in residential land, farmland, or fishing quota, we’ll make decisions in just 15 days, unless the application is potentially contrary to New Zealand’s national interest.

Investments that are subject to a national interest test will continue with a similar process to now, however we are managing rapid consent turn around even in that scenario.

Altogether, we can point to a track record of tangible change in our overseas investment regime. That record allows us to make credible commitments to further improvements planned this year. The take-out is a Government that is committed to attracting overseas investment that matches its words with actions, and a country that is becoming more attractive as a destination for overseas investors.

Regulatory reform

As I mentioned earlier, consenting overseas investment is one regulatory system that we are committed to reforming. We are committed to improving our regulatory environment across the board, and this Government has a very busy program of making it easier to use and exchange private property in this country.

We are not alone in the world when it comes to concerns about red tape and regulation. I think we can make a strong case, however, that we are a standout in tackling the problem.

There has been a red tape renaissance around the world recently, with many governments committing to cutting red tape. I recently saw it described in The Economistas ‘the revolt against regulation’. Countries all over the world are waking up to the impact of decades of laws and regulations, created at one time to ‘solve’ a problem or scratch an electoral itch, over time stacking up like lasagne until no one knows why they were implemented in the first place and if they’re achieving anything other than compliance.

One important step we’ve taken to address the encroachment of red tape across the economy is setting up the Ministry for Regulation. The idea behind the organisation is simple – bureaucracies have their own interests, and a department whose job is to enforce a rule isn’t going to suggest abolishing that rule. Which is where the Ministry for Regulation comes in, they make sure that the Government’s number one consideration is the impact on the regulated party. The Ministry is a major part of this government’s deregulation agenda.

One year ago, the Ministry for Regulation was given the task of improving the quality of regulation in New Zealand. The Ministry can now point to a growing list of deregulation measures helping businesses, workers, and consumers.

As a central agency, the Ministry’s role is to improve regulatory quality across the board, including the experience that New Zealanders have of complying with regulation.

In November last year, we launched a new Red Tape Tipline. This is an online tool on the Ministry’s website where people can make submissions about red tape that affects them. The Ministry is now assisting people by unblocking a myriad of little irritations so they can get back to doing what they do best; producing jobs for their employees, returns for their investors, and goods and services for their customers.

The Ministry is already working hard on the introduction of a Regulatory Standards Bill.The Bill will codify principles of good regulatory practice for existing and future regulations, ensuring regulatory decisions are based on principles of good law-making and economic efficiency.

To make regulatorsaccountable to the New Zealanders they regulate, the Bill proposes a Regulatory Standards Board. The Board will assess complaints and challenges to regulations. Raising the political cost of making bad laws by allowing New Zealanders to hold regulators accountable will result in better law-making, higher productivity, and higher wages for Kiwis.

With the passage of the Regulatory Standards Bill, new and existing laws will be tested against legislated principles of responsible regulation. I won’t elaborate on each one, but these principles establish standards for:

• The rule of law
• Liberties
• Taking of property
• Taxes, fees and levies
• The role of the courts
• Good lawmaking, including problem definition, cost-benefit analysis, and identification of where costs and benefits fall.

Publicly testing regulatory activity against these principles makes it easier for voters to monitor what their politicians are up to. In turn it changes the political calculus from politicians being rewarded for ‘doing something’ to politicians and officials being rewarded for doing something in line with sound regulatory principles.

Ultimately, this Bill will help the Government achieve its goal of improving productivity – ensuring that the regulatory system is transparent, has a mechanism for recourse, and holds regulators accountable to the people.

The Ministry is also tasked with reviewing existing regulations and making recommendations for improvement.

A recently-concluded review into agricultural and horticultural products – widely welcomed by farmers, growers and our agriculture industry – made 16 recommendations for change, with Cabinet accepting all recommendations.

The review found that halving approval times for new products is estimated to generate benefits of $272 million over twenty years for New Zealand farmers and growers.

Thanks to the work of the Ministry, farmers and growers will have faster access to new products which will lift primary sector productivity and growth.

That is one example. Another is Early Childhood Education. In New Zealand it is largely privately-run and amounts to a $6 billion dollar industry. Operators have felt neglected and infuriated by a regulatory system involving multiple agencies and a lack of clarity.

The Ministry for Regulation has listened to the operators, considered their concerns, and brought together the regulators to map out a new approach that addresses genuine public concerns, while making it easier for the sector to operate. As it gets up to speed, the Ministry will be reviewing a sector a quarter for the foreseeable future.

Deregulation across Government

As the Minister for Regulation, I’m proud to be leading the Government’s approach to regulatory policy, however it would be wrong to conclude that’s all we’re doing, or that our regulatory policy is entirely dependent on the Ministry’s efforts. Regulatory reform is a theme across the entire Government.

This Government is replacing its resource management laws. The new law will be premised on the fundamental principle of private property rights. The starting presumption is that you can use and develop your property, and objections should be grounded in impairment of the objectors’ property rights. The result will be a law that makes it easier to use and develop real property.

My colleague, Brooke van Velden, as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, has repealed the previous Government’s attempt at industry-wide collective bargaining and has reintroduced 90-day employment trials. She’s now set her sights on simplifying our health and safety and employment laws too, providing certainty for employers and employees.

Another of my colleagues, Nicole McKee, is determined to fix our anti-money laundering laws and provide regulatory relief for individuals and businesses who use that law. This is alongside our Minister of Commerce Scott Simpson’s programme of financial sector regulatory reform.

Our team of agriculture ministers is removing some of the more illogical restrictions on our agricultural sector so farmers can get on with farming.

Our Minister for Energy, Simon Watts, is reversing the previous Government’s ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.

My Colleague Chris Penk, the Minister for Building and Housing, is opening the building products market to foreign competition in a drive to get prices down.

My colleague Chris Bishop is making it easier to get on and build the infrastructure our country desperately needs, as you heard from him earlier.

There is a significant regulatory reform programme happening across nearly every sector of our Government. The result will be a greater ease of doing business, more investment from inside and outside our shores, and better productivity.

Conclusion

We all know that capital is highly mobile, and investors are looking for safe and stable countries to do business.

I am excited by the opportunities presented through the major reforms the Government is making.

We’re creating the conditions that make it even easier for businesses like yours to invest, innovate and grow in New Zealand. We do that because we know it’s a win-win – investment leads to productivity, which leads to higher wages and happier lives.

A troubled world needs a frontier. That’s a space for pioneers. My ancestors started coming to these islands 800 years ago, and migrants continue to join my wider family this century. We are a nation of immigrants.

What we all share is the pioneering spirit that drove us here. We have an ambition to make tomorrow better than today through our own efforts. I believe that culture is more valuable than anything physical, because the greatest natural resource is human creativity.

It also makes us wonderful partners for like-minded people around the world. People who seek to trade value for value and get stronger together. I hope that after this conference, you will see New Zealand as a special place of opportunity, just as my family has for 800 years.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Ka nui te mihi kia kotou, kia ora, and good morning everyone. 

To those of you visiting us from overseas, can I extend a very special welcome to each and every one of you. 

Welcome to New Zealand, welcome to the best country on planet Earth, and welcome to our stunning Auckland waterfront. 

And to all those Kiwis I see in the room today, thank you for being here and showcasing some of the extraordinary businesses and talent that exists in our business community. 

And it was a real pleasure to meet many of you informally last night, and my Ministers and I are really looking forward to spending much more time with you over the next two days. 

I meant it before when I said this is the best country on planet Earth. 

Because what makes New Zealand so very special and unique is our Kiwi Spirit which is exemplified in the qualities, character, and attitude of New Zealanders.  

For us, it‘s about resilience and determination, ingenuity and innovation, adventure and exploration, creativity and practical problem-solving, humility and mateship, fairness, and a deep care for our land and community. 

It’s no surprise that growing up in New Zealand, our heroes are Kiwi trailblazers and pioneers, people who have dared to push boundaries, challenge the status quo, and leave a lasting mark on the world.

From our early Māori explorers navigating vast oceans guided by the stars, to modern-day adventurers like Sir Edmund Hillary conquering Everest.   

To Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics, who split the atom and revolutionised our understanding of science. To Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and his groundbreaking developments in rocket technology launching satellites into space. 

And Kate Shepperd, who secured New Zealand women the right to vote – the very first country in the world to do so. 

And our phenomenal athletes who show the world what determination and talent can achieve. Or the stunning world of The Lord of the Rings created by one of our most creative storytellers – Peter Jackson.

We may be a small country, but time and again, we have proven that size is no barrier to greatness. From the peaks of Everest to the frontlines of social progress, from scientific breakthroughs to arts and sporting legends, Kiwis have led the way.

And we’re living in an age when New Zealand has never been closer to the action – right in the middle of the booming Indo-Pacific with direct connections to Asia and North America. 

With the weight of global economic activity shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific and digital connections breaking down barriers, New Zealand has never been closer to the world.  

But for all our spirit and hard work, we also know New Zealand can’t do it alone. 

We’re a small country of around five million people like Ireland, Singapore, and Denmark. 

Just as those countries have prospered by tapping into larger markets, building stronger international connections, and fostering trade and investment, New Zealand needs to do the same. 

If we want our country to thrive, we need to work even harder to compete on the world stage – and, in particular, to unlock the commercial partnerships that will supercharge the next generation of growth in the New Zealand economy. 

That means the Government will work more with Industry to deliver much of the infrastructure and projects that will be showcased over the next two days. 

Many of your organisations will have extensive experience delivering outstanding world-class infrastructure to national and regional governments worldwide.

I want New Zealand to seize every opportunity to partner with the private sector and deliver a fresh generation of infrastructure investment to unleash economic growth.  

But it’s not just infrastructure. 

I want to develop closer ties between outstanding New Zealanders and their companies based here, with investors and organisations based offshore.  

I also want to unlock more partnerships between indigenous Iwi Māori organisations and commercial investors, whether they are based in Auckland or Abu Dhabi, Dunedin or Denver.  

I want start-ups based in Christchurch and Hamilton fighting for seed capital in San Francisco and London – winning their share of global influence and success. 

Breaking perceptions about the New Zealand economy is critical to that. 

Yes, we have globally competitive dairy, film, and tourist industries, but our space industry is also operating at the cutting edge, ranking fourth in the world for launches behind the US, China, and Russia. 

Over the next two days, you will hear more about our plan to unleash growth and ensure New Zealand reaches its full potential. 

We want you to join us on that journey, and we will have several opportunities on display. 

That will include the opportunity to deliver infrastructure in partnership with the Crown – both in the form of immediate opportunities and the pipeline of projects going forward. 

It will include working with Iwi Māori organisations to grow their businesses as they make a multigenerational investment in their people. 

It will include opportunities in a range of specific sectors where we believe New Zealand has a unique role to play and where we expect the Government to focus its efforts on growth. 

In the very short term, we have made good economic progress in our first year in Government, although there’s still a long way to go. 

New Zealand is now in the early stages of a cyclical economic recovery, with growth beginning to pick up and unemployment expected to peak around its current rate. 

Inflation has fallen and now sits comfortably anchored within the Reserve Bank’s target band at 2.2%. 

Annual tourism expenditure was up 23% last year, and services and manufacturing activity have returned to growth after extended periods of contraction. 

Business confidence is at around its highest level in a decade. As confidence has risen, retail trade has picked up, and growth is expected to rise, hitting 3% in 2026. 

So, there’s now cause for optimism in the New Zealand economy that the recovery is underway and better days lie ahead. 

For policymakers here in New Zealand, that poses an opportunity – not just to watch the economic recovery, but to shape it. 

Step-changing economic productivity, lifting incomes, creating jobs, and unleashing the investment New Zealand needs to become much more prosperous.  

Which brings us to today. 

I know the only way we will raise incomes, lift New Zealanders’ standard of living, and fund the quality public services we rely on is by unlocking more investment, more innovation, and more entrepreneurship.

Having broken inflation last year, our collective focus has now turned to shaping the economic recovery – ensuring we take every possible step to lift New Zealand’s economic performance. 

That renewed energy and effort forms the backdrop of this Summit. 

My Government is working around the clock to make New Zealand an outstanding place to do business. 

But before I highlight some of those reforms and my economic priorities as Prime Minister, I want to make a more fundamental point about New Zealand as an investment destination. 

New Zealand has been and will continue to be a poster child for social and political stability in a more volatile and challenging world. 

That reputation is long-standing, but in challenging times, it has come into sharper focus. 

We stand up for our values and live by them, too. That means respecting civil liberties, private property and private life, and the democratic and social institutions that underpin them. 

We consistently advocate for a rules-based international order that allows small countries like New Zealand to thrive. Free trade isn’t just an idea in New Zealand; it’s the bedrock of our prosperity. 

For farmers and growers living in rural New Zealand, it has allowed a modern economic miracle: the opportunity to not just collectively operate one of the most efficient agricultural sectors in the world but to live in some of the most stunning parts of the world while they do it. 

Finally, we might disagree sometimes – but we’re not disagreeable. Over the next two days, you will hear from various political leaders.

You will hear from senior Ministers representing each of the three political parties in our Coalition Government, as well as Barbara Edmonds, the Labour Party’s Opposition Finance Spokesperson.  

It’s pretty normal in New Zealand for political parties to disagree with each other – often loudly, and sometimes even with my own Coalition colleagues. 

But I believe the broad political representation that is here demonstrates that most New Zealanders share the same motivations – higher incomes and more financial freedom, quality public services, and a long-standing belief that our best days lie ahead of us. 

When you look at all the tension, volatility, and strife in the world today, I think that makes us pretty special, and a very attractive destination for anyone looking to take shelter from the global storm. 

Political stability, however, is not an excuse for a lack of ambition. 

You should be under no illusions about my commitment to the Government’s growth agenda and the reforms we are pushing through to unleash investment in the New Zealand economy. 

Last month, Minister for Economic Growth Nicola Willis published our Government’s Going for Growth Agenda – we have copies for you here – which outlines a range of actions we are taking to get the New Zealand economy moving and realising its vast potential. 

Each of those actions fits into one of five pillars we have identified as critical to lifting economic growth and improving New Zealanders’ standard of living:

1. Developing talent,
2. Encouraging innovation, science, and technology,
3. Introducing competitive business settings,
4. Promoting global trade and investment,
5. And delivering infrastructure for growth. 

Across each of those pillars, we have Ministers from across the Government working day and night to drive through reform – in transport,  tourism, aquaculture, construction, advanced aviation, mining, energy, agriculture, and horticulture. 

Over the next two days, you will hear much more about our work programme in those areas that will play a critical role in the next phase of New Zealand’s growth story – with more information on a series of specific investable propositions available in the private sector. 

Among that reform programme are some significant changes designed to achieve a profound step change in the New Zealand economy that I would like to touch on today. 

For a start, we are clearing away decades of broken planning law – brick by brick. 

We have introduced the Fast Track regime, which streamlines the consenting process for projects that are regionally and nationally significant. 

In short, instead of seeking different permissions under different laws, under Fast Track, it’s all done in one place, with a faster process and fewer hurdles to getting underway. 

That regime is now up and running, and I know a number of projects have already submitted applications since it became operational last month. 

In short, if you want to build a wind farm, a highway, a quarry, hundreds of new homes, or any other regionally or nationally significant projects, we are busting down the doors to make it happen faster and cheaper. 

149 projects have already been listed in legislation, but nothing prevents new projects from applying for referral into the scheme. 

And it doesn’t stop with Fast Track. 

Further planning reforms are also on the way, including a total replacement of the Resource Management Act. 

We are also eliminating the barriers to more significant investment in energy and generation to unleash abundant, affordable energy. 

The impact of unaffordable and unreliable energy on economic growth has been brought into the spotlight in recent years following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Industries in Europe that had historically relied on access to low-cost natural gas came under tremendous strain, putting pressure on growth and household incomes. 

In New Zealand, we are lucky that 85% of electricity generation is already renewable, thanks to decades of investment in hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal.  

But we can’t risk falling short in the years to come. So, as a Government, we are tearing down the barriers to fresh energy investment. That means introducing more permissive rules for renewables.

But it also means ending restrictions on offshore oil and gas exploration – and providing certainty for market participants by confidently saying that gas has to be part of New Zealand’s energy mix going forward.  

At the same time, we are making it easier to invest in New Zealand from offshore.  

That started last year, with fresh directives to our Overseas Investment Office, which slashed processing times and made applications more predictable. 

Today, an application for offshore investment is approved within 18 days on average, compared to 28 days prior to those changes.

And two weeks ago, we announced upcoming changes to legislation designed to further improve the timeliness and reliability of our overseas investment regime. 

We also announced just last month that, from April 1 this year, individuals who invest at least $5 million in New Zealand will be eligible for an Active Investor Visa, with a pathway to residency after three years. 

I know that for many of you from offshore in this room, that will be positive news. But as a New Zealander, I have to say it’s an even bigger deal for the sharp, ambitious Kiwis here and all around the country, who are hungry for capital and hungry to grow. 

We know the impact foreign investment has on local businesses. It’s not just the capital investment; it’s the skills, connections, and linkages into new markets. 

That translates into higher wages, more jobs, more money in Kiwi wallets, and more resilient businesses that make an even greater contribution in the community. 

We need more of it, especially for a small country hungry to grow like New Zealand, which is why I have invited many of you here today. 

I believe New Zealand’s best days are ahead of us—and we can make them happen if we get serious about partnering with commercial expertise to solve some of our biggest economic challenges and seize on the huge economic opportunities ahead of us. 

Helping to end New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit through private sector partnership.

Fattening out our capital markets and opening up new sectors for growth.

Strengthening our connections to the world, enhancing technology, lifting productivity, and opening new markets for our products and services. 

Over the next two days, you will hear from a range of leaders—cabinet Ministers, business leaders, and Iwi Māori leaders—who I know are committed to responding to our challenges and opportunities. 

There will also be plenty of time across both days for closer interactions and to discuss the opportunities and challenges that you are confronting in your own businesses. 

While you’re here, please also enjoy our hospitality and culture. We’re not just here to do business—we’re here to build relationships and make the case for New Zealand as an outstanding country to invest in, to visit, and to establish roots in. 

So once again, and on behalf of the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand people, welcome to this year’s Summit. 

I’m excited to get stuck in – and I can’t wait to hear more from you over the next two days about your approach to business and the difference you could make for growth, investment, jobs, and opportunity for us here in New Zealand. 

Thank you. 

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Tēnā koutou katoa.

Good morning and thank you to FintechNZ for having me here today.

Thank you especially to executive director Jason Roberts, and for putting together such fabulous event.

It is wonderful to be speaking to such a large audience. I am told there are nearly 400 attendees today, which speaks to the exciting growth that the fintech sector has undergone in New Zealand over recent years. 

I understand that this event outgrew last year’s venue. That is excellent news for you – but it’s also excellent news for New Zealand as fintechs have so much to offer our country and our economy.

As a small, sparsely populated country at the bottom of the world, high-value, weightless exports like fintech products have significant economic potential. 

I am delighted to be speaking to you as the new Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister.

Commerce and Consumer Affairs is a significant – although little understood – portfolio.

In simple terms – and as the name suggests – there are two key strands to the portfolio:

1. First, a responsibility to ensure that the laws and regulations that govern our commercial environment are fit for purpose and enable businesses to safely and easily transact. That includes responsibility for legislation like the Companies Act and Commerce Act – two laws which are currently undergoing long overdue reviews.
2. Second, is a responsibility to safeguard the interests of consumers and ensure that their rights are fairly upheld. That’s the consumer affairs side and includes responsibility for legislation like the Fair Trading Act, which I am planning to launch a review of later this year. 

Balancing these two halves requires careful consideration and we don’t always get it right. It’s possible to end up with policies that favour commercial entities over consumers or consumers over commercial entities. 

And both of these scenarios are equally bad. Without adequate consumer protections, businesses lose their social license and infringe on consumers’ rights and freedoms. And without sufficiently open and well-functioning markets, businesses fail and people lose their job and income, and are faced with fewer choices.

However, when policy works well, it can – and should – benefit both commercial entities and consumers. 

That’s the sweet spot that a good Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister should be aiming for.

The fantastic thing about the fintech sector is that it speaks equally convincingly to both sides of the equation. 

From a commerce perspective, fintechs offer opportunities for improving productivity, generating revenue and creating jobs and exports.

Equally fantastic are the opportunities offered to consumers through innovative products and enhanced competition, leading to greater choice and freedom.

So, safe to say I am excited to be here and excited to be beginning what I intend to be an open and collaborative relationship with the fintech sector.

Background

I know that my predecessor, Andrew Bayly, was very engaged with the sector and that he was in active discussion with many of you about how the Government can support you to grow and innovate. 

I share Andrew’s enthusiasm and I am looking forward to continuing at pace the work he started with you. 

I want to be clear that from a policy perspective it is full steam ahead and there is no intention to slow down or change direction. 

Work underway

In the Commerce and Consumer Affairs space, many of our regulations and legislation have languished and there was a fairly urgent need to reform some of the foundational pieces of architecture. 

I mentioned earlier that we are reviewing the Companies Act and reforming our corporate governance laws – this hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years.

Likewise, our competition settings have become increasingly out of step with our trading partners. I doubt any of you in the room are unaware that New Zealand suffers from a crucial lack of competition in key sectors – including, importantly, banking. 

We have also placed ourselves at a competitive disadvantage by not keeping pace with transformative technologies, including crypto, blockchain and ‘open banking’ – to name a few.

I am aware of concerns from the fintech sector that our regulatory and legal environment have not sufficiently adapted to allow for these technologies and that there has been a lack of leadership and strategic direction. 

Some of you have been participating on government led roundtables and with officials at MBIE and FMA. I hope that through that engagement you are sensing a change in tone and are experiencing a new willingness to respond to issues.

FMA’s regulatory sandbox

For example, I am optimistic about the FMA’s “regulatory sandbox” and keen to hear your feedback as the process continues.

I understand that the FMA received 24 applications and will, by the end of March, be notifying successful applicants.

Please keep in touch with me and my officials about your experience.

It is my hope that the sandbox will enable fintechs to save time, reduce costs and bring innovative products to market sooner. 

But the sandbox is also an opportunity for the FMA to identify unnecessary red tape that poses an industry-wide barrier.

I am aware that there are regulatory barriers that prevent fintechs from competing on a level playing field, and I am determined to work with Government and industry to remove these barriers.

Consumer data right

I am delighted that we are finally establishing a ‘consumer data right’ and advancing plans to roll out ‘open banking’.

Commerce Ministers have been talking about ‘open banking’ for nearly 10 years. 

In August 2017, the then Minister Jacqui Dean wrote to Payments NZ encouraging them to advance payments technology. 

Safe to say the time for writing letters of encouragement has been and gone. 

As many of you know, the Customer and Product Data Bill, which is currently before Parliament, establishes a framework to enable access to, and sharing of, customer data.

This is a transformative piece of legislation that has the potential to reshape our economy. 

The legislation lays the foundation for ‘open banking’ and eventually ‘open electricity’, ‘open insurance’, ‘open telecommunications’ and more. The possibilities are immense.

The Bill passed second reading in Parliament last week and is scheduled for further consideration this week. 

We are moving as fast as we can, and have committed to passing it through all stages by the end of Q1 this year.

Soon after the Bill passes, we will be applying it on a sector-by-sector basis through regulations.

Banking will be the first cab off the rank, and my team are working with industry to develop the banking regulations. 

Our goal is to have open banking fully operational by the end of the year.

Again, please keep in touch with me throughout this process. 

I am conscious that open banking has the potential to over promise and under deliver and I know that uptake in other jurisdictions has been underwhelming. 

The single greatest benefit of being slow is that we can learn from others’ mistakes and there are some important differences in our approach compared to Australia, for example.

But this doesn’t mean we have all the answers. For open banking to deliver on the promise of increased competition and greater consumer choice, we need your buy in.

My officials and I are acutely aware of the need to balance safety and security with openness and accessibility. We also know that we need to agree a pricing model that allows enough income generation to support innovation but is affordable.

Please make sure you are actively participating in these discussions. Let’s do it once and do it right. 

Banking competition

Continuing with the theme of competition, in August last year, the Commerce Commission released its final report into personal banking services.

The report found that banks do not face strong competition, and made 14 recommendations, which we have committed to implementing.

As well as open banking, this includes increasing the emphasis on competition in the Reserve Bank’s prudential regulation and payment systems, capitalising Kiwibank, and addressing issues in the anti-money laundering regime.

Many of these recommendations fall within the Finance Miniter’s portfolio, however please know that I will be advocating internally on your behalf.

Driving better competition across the economy, but in particular in banking, is a key concern for the Finance Miniter, and I will be working closely with her to achieve this.

Financial services reform

Finally, before I close off, I want to touch on an important piece of work underway to reform how financial services are regulated in New Zealand. 

Changes to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act in 2019 saw a big increase in the time it took to process consumer loans. Applicants who would have previously qualified for a mortgage were suddenly being turned down. 

The Conduct of Institutions (or CoFI) regime was another change in the system, requiring large product providers like banks and insurers to implement fair conduct programmes. 

Last year, Cabinet agreed to changes to reduce the complexity and conservatism baked into the CCCFA, streamline requirements in the incoming CoFI legislation, and improve the transparency and effectiveness of the dispute resolution system. 

Legislation to make these changes will be introduced shortly, subject to Cabinet agreement. 

These changes will simplify the financial services regulatory environment.

I realise this may not sound like super exciting work, but enabling consumers and businesses to safely and efficiently access credit when they need it, is vital for our economy. 

When the money stops, everything stops.

Closing remarks 

In closing, I would like to thank everyone here for the role you play in helping to shape a more productive and innovative economy. 

I am keen to hear about other actions that the Government can take to make the fintech sector thrive and am looking forward to engaging with you throughout the year.

Thank you again for having me here today. 

Enjoy your day and stay in touch. 

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good afternoon, everyone. Today I’d like to talk to you about progress the Government has made on our Going for Housing Growth agenda. I’m also excited to announce policy decisions that will improve infrastructure funding and financing to get more houses built.

Thank you to Local Government New Zealand for hosting this meeting. It is crucial that central and local government, work together in the areas of housing, planning reform, and transport to unlock New Zealand’s potential.

NEW ZEALAND’S HOUSING CHALLENGES

Let’s start with an overview of our housing challenge.

Over the last three decades real house prices in New Zealand increased more than any other OECD country. According to the OECD’s Better Life Index, we also rank 40^th out of 41 countries for housing affordability – just in front of the Slovak Republic.

Put simply, our housing market has held us back economically and socially:

• New Zealanders spend a larger share of their income on housing – meaning less disposable income can go towards goods, services, and investments,
• In 2022, more than half of all household wealth was tied up in land and houses,
• Homeownership rates are near their lowest in 80 years,
• Young people are leaving New Zealand to find better opportunities, and
• There are 20,300 families on the social housing wait list.

But it hasn’t always been like this. Just 23 years ago in 2002, New Zealand had a house price to wage ratio of 3:1. Now, house prices outstrip wages by over 6:1.

The worst part about this is that we have known about our housing crisis – and how to fix it – for over a decade.

In fact, the first two recommendations in the Productivity Commission’s 2012 inquiry into housing affordability were:

1. For central and local government to free up more land for housing in the inner city, suburbs, and city edge; and
2. To ensure greater discipline around charging for growth infrastructure. Since then, report after report and inquiry after inquiry has found that our planning system, particularly restrictions on the supply of developable urban land, are at the heart of our housing affordability challenge.

This Government has seen the evidence, listened, and is getting on with the job.

I am determined to fix our housing crisis by addressing the root cause of the problem, focusing on the fundamentals, and treating housing as a complete and dynamic system.

Getting the settings for housing and land markets right will do three things:

1. Lift economic growth and productivity,
2. Reduce the social consequences of unaffordable housing, and
3. Help us get the Government’s books back in order.

HOUSING IS AN ENABLER OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY

I want to spend a bit of time focusing on the relationship between housing and economic growth.

Housing is a basic human need, and it is also an enabler of productivity, and for decades, New Zealand has suffered from a productivity disease.

As Paul Krugman so famously observed, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.”

Productivity growth is a key driver of our standard of living and prosperity.

It will probably surprise – and I hope alarm you – to learn that our productivity is closer to places like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic than it is to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States.

In other words, our productivity rates are on par with countries that endured 40 years of communism.

To turn this around, the Government is focused on going for growth, whether that’s in trade, foreign investment, innovation and technology, competition, infrastructure, or housing – the whole shebang.

It is not going to be easy to really get growth and productivity going in New Zealand. But, in my view, getting the underlying settings housing and land markets right will do a lot of the heavy lifting.

There is now a mountain of economic evidence that cities are engines of productivity, and the evidence shows bigger is better.

In New Zealand, it is estimated that doubling a city’s population could increase output by 3.5%. And, on average, workers in cities earn one third more than their non-urban counterparts.

Throughout history, cities have been the hub of innovation. Think 15^th century Florence, 17^th century Amsterdam, 18^th century London, and San Francisco today.

Cities are powerful engines of growth because they foster agglomeration economies – which are the benefits that occur when firms and people cluster together. When people are close, we can more effectively:

• Share infrastructure, supply chains, and capital,
• Match skills to jobs, and
• Learn from each through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.

A floor filled with smart people working next to each other and chatting over coffee, in a building filled with floors, in a city full of buildings, unsurprisingly, enables greater opportunities.

Proximity encourages collaboration and innovation.

So, the question is, are we making the most out of New Zealand’s cities?

If we are honest with ourselves, the answer is no.

Quite often I experience ‘housing utopia whiplash’ – one article says, “don’t put intensification here, we need to protect the wooden villas”, another says “don’t do greenfield development, it contributes to more emissions”.

But if you can’t go up or out, you can’t go anywhere.

To make housing more affordable, our cities need to growth both up and out – we need bigger cities and, we need more houses.

Having more affordable housing would also free up more disposable income and capital for investment in businesses, capital, infrastructure, and people.

Modelling shows, that under an ‘ambitious scenario’ of removing all supply-side constraints, New Zealand could increase output per worker by up to 1.6%, increase workers moving from Australia to New Zealand’s high-productivity regions by up to 7.2%, and increase GDP by up to 8.4%.

Now, removing all supply-side constraints is not realistic – but what I do know is that we can do so much more than we are now.

ACTIONS ON GOING FOR HOUSING GROWTH SO FAR

In July last year, I outlined our Going for Housing Growth policy:

• Pillar 1: freeing up land for development and removing unnecessary planning barriers,
• Pillar 2: improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth, and
• Pillar 3: providing incentives for communities and councils to support growth.

We have made good progress on Pillar 1 which includes Housing Growth Targets for Tier 1 and 2 councils to “live-zone” 30-years of housing demand, making it easier for cities to expand, strengthening the intensification provisions in the NPS-UD, putting in new rules requiring councils to enable mixed-used development, and abolishing minimum floor areas and balcony requirements.

Details about how Pillar 1 will be implemented will be announced in the coming months.

Today, I will announce policy decisions Cabinet has made on Pillar 2, which I will get to shortly.

Officials are also working away on Pillar 3 in the context of Pillars 1 and 2, which will ensure that councils and communities face strong incentives – carrots or sticks – for growth.

To help fix the housing crisis, the Government has also:

• Passed the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill to make sensible changes to tenancy rules to encourage landlords into the market;
• Passed legislation to make it easier for international investment into “Build to Rent” housing;
• Passed the Fast-track Approvals Act which makes it much easier to consent large-scale housing developments;
• Funded 1,500 new social housing places delivered by Community Housing Providers; and
• Established a Residential Development Underwrite scheme to support construction during the market downturn.

Before the next election, we will have also replaced the Resource Management Act with new legislation. More on that next month.

ANNOUNCEMENTS ON PILLAR 2

Now let’s talk about Pillar 2 – improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth.

I know central government has given local government a hard time about not zoning enough land for housing. I’ve done it once or twice before.

And it’s true, you haven’t.

But what I have heard from you and housing experts, is that freeing up urban land is not enough on its own. We also need to ensure the timely provision of infrastructure.

Put simply, you can’t have housing without land, water, transport, and other community infrastructure. It’s a package.

However, under the status quo, councils and developers face significant challenges to fund and finance enabling infrastructure for housing.

I hope you’ll agree with me that existing tools like Development Contributions (DCs), and the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act are not fit for purpose.

We want to move to a future state where funding and financing tools enable a responsive supply of infrastructure where it is commercially viable to build new houses.

This will shift market expectations of future scarcity, bring down the cost of land for new housing, and improve incentives to develop land sooner instead of land banking.

To achieve this future, our overarching approach is that ‘growth pays for growth’.

So, today, I am excited to announce five key changes to our infrastructure funding settings that will get more houses built:

• The first is replacing DCs with a Development Levy System,
• The second is establishing regulatory oversight of Development Levies to ensure charges are fair and appropriate,
• The third is increasing the flexibility of targeted rates,
• The fourth is improving the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act, and
• The fifth is broadening existing tools to support value capture.

Essentially, we are developing a flexible toolkit of mechanisms to ensure growth pays for growth”. There is no funding and financing mechanism that will suit all developments. But the flexible toolkit I’m about to outline will help ensure a responsive supply of infrastructure.

Development Levies system

Let’s start with replacing DCs with a Development Levy system.

Under the status quo, councils can only recover infrastructure costs for planned, costed, and in-sequence developments. In effect, this means councils can only recover costs if they have certainty about when, where, and what development occurs.

But this level of certainty isn’t realistic. We don’t live in Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City” or “planners paradise”, and we’re not stuck in the Soviet Union. We want growth to be demand-led, not planner-led.

We know DCs aren’t working, because councils haven’t been able to effectively recover growth costs, leaving ratepayers to pick up the cheque.

For example, Auckland Council estimates that $330m in growth infrastructure costs for Drury will be met by ratepayers, not by the beneficiaries of the infrastructure. Similarly, Tauranga City Council has reported 16 percent under-recovery for projects that were included in DC policies, which saw over $70m of debt expected to be transferred to ratepayers.

Not only is this unfair, but it makes existing residents resistant to growth.

The political economy of housing is stacked against actually building it. It is not surprising that existing ratepayers mobilise against new housing when they’re required to pick up the tab for the infrastructure required for it.

DCs were designed in 2002 for a world with a strategy of “urban containment”, where councils put rings around and ceilings on top of our cities.

The old model was to plan cities carefully.

So, we sequenced, and planned, and costed the infrastructure, then urban land was dripped slowly into the market. This meant that councils had lots of control over the release of urban land.

But these constraints also created a scorching hot land and housing market driven by artificial scarcity.

Pillar 1 is about upending the system by live zoning 30 years’ worth of housing demand at any one-time for Tier 1 and 2 councils, flooding the market with development opportunities and fundamentally making housing more affordable.

We are deliberately upending the artificial planning and zoning constraints that have made it difficult to use land for housing.

Once Pillar 1 goes live and there is an abundance of urban land, councils won’t be able to plan or cost growth in detail anywhere, everywhere, all at once – it’s simply not feasible.

So, we need a flexible funding and financing system to match the flexible planning system.

That’s Development Levies.

Under this new system, councils and other infrastructure providers will be able to charge developers for their share of aggregate infrastructure growth costs across an urban area over the long-term.

Development Levies will provide far more flexibility for councils and other infrastructure providers to recover costs for any in-sequence development – whether it planned and costed, or not.

Quite simply, this tool will respond to growth and recover costs, no matter where the growth occurs within land zoned for housing.

For areas that are zoned for housing – remembering there will be a lot more of it under our new system – Development Levies will look like:

• Separate levies that are ring-fenced for each specific infrastructure service such as drinking water, wastewater, and transport;
• Specific “levy zones”, which are expected to cover pre-defined urban areas that are larger than most current DC catchments;
• Discretion for councils to impose additional charges on top of the base levy in specific locations that require a particularly high-cost service;
• A prescribed methodology that councils and infrastructure providers must follow to determine aggregate growth costs and standardised growth units; and
• Consideration of different models of infrastructure delivery including support for first-mover developers and recovering council costs for infrastructure owned by another entity.

For out-of-sequence development, there will be a process councils or water service providers must follow to determine an appropriate levy – or Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act levies could be used. As I say, this is a toolkit of approaches to ensure infrastructure is funded and built.

The new Development Levy system has many benefits.

It will reduce financial risks for councils and could moderate rate increases, better incentivising communities to support growth.

It will improve the predictability of infrastructure charges. Where these charges are credibly signalled in advance, we expect developers will account for added costs in shopping for developable land, lowering the amount they are willing to pay.

It will increase transparency and reduce administrative complexity for councils.

Regulatory oversight

The second change is to create regulatory oversight of the development levy regime.

Councils can have monopolistic pricing power as the sole provider of certain infrastructure.

The new levy system will restrict local authority discretion about various matters, such as setting the methodology used to allocate project costs.

But it is important that prices are fair and appropriate, so we will also establish regulatory oversight of Development Levies, which will be integrated with the regulatory oversight of water services and rates.

While the wider system is being designed, we will put in interim oversight arrangements, which may include requirements around transparency and information disclosure, and having an independent assessment of proposed levies.

Work is underway on this area right now and the government will be engaging with councils and developers in the coming months to get the details right.

Increasing the flexibility of targeted rates

Now moving onto targeted rates.

I understand that not everyone, particularly small councils, will be up for using the Development Levy system. So, we are also making changes to targeted rates to support urban growth.

We will allow councils to set targeted rates that apply when a rating unit is created at the subdivision stage. This will enable councils to set targeted rates that only apply to new developments. And, for small councils, this could be used as a good alternative to Development Levies.

Additionally, this change will enable targeted rates and Development Levies to be used together where projects benefit existing residents and provide for growth.

Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act changes

Fourth, we will be making changes to the IFF Act.

The IFF Act was passed in 2020 so that developers could freely arrange private funding and financing solutions for enabling infrastructure. It was supposed to allow developers to bypass the issue of relying on councils for the timely provision of infrastructure.

However, in the five years since it was passed, no levy proposals have been received for new residential developments, likely due to its complexity and administrative burden.

My Undersecretary Simon Court has been leading the work here and he will speak to the full suite of changes we are making shortly.

But at a high-level, the Government has agreed to make several remedial amendments to improve the effectiveness of the Act, particularly for developer-led projects. These changes will remove unnecessary barriers and make the overall process simpler.

Broadening existing tools to support cost recovery and value capture

But what I am really excited about is broadening existing tools like the IFF Act to support value capture and cost recovery.

As a general principle, those who benefit from publicly funded infrastructure should help contribute to the cost of it. New state highways, for example, create benefits for private landowners by unlocking capacity for new development or improving journeys for existing households.

New busways or rail lines clearly create benefits for those located near the stations.

So, we will enable IFF Act levies to be charged for major transport projects, e.g., projects delivered by NZTA.

This change has the potential to kickstart our embrace of Transit Oriented Development or TOD.

TOD promotes compact, mixed-use, pedestrian friendly cities, with development clustered around, and integrated with, mass transit. The idea is to have as many jobs, houses, services and amenities as possible around public transport stations.

This is not an untested theory: transit-oriented development has been adopted across world-class in cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Singapore – all of which use some form of value capture.

We looked at establishing a complicated new tool that tries to calculate land value uplift to essentially tax windfall gains, but we have concluded that it is fine in theory but much harder in reality.

Our preference is for a much simpler solution that builds on existing legislation – getting beneficiaries to pay for some proportion of the cost of the investment through infrastructure levies.

Henry George would certainly approve.

Conclusion

Today’s announcement outlines our plans to establish a flexible funding and financing system – Pillar 2 – to complement our new flexible planning system – Pillar 1.

These are some big changes, and it will take some time to get them right. Our aim is to have legislation in the House by September this year, to come into effect next year.

What I can promise is that my officials will engage with councils and developers to ensure we create a future state that works:

Where urban land is abundant, the supply of infrastructure is responsive, and where there are loads of development opportunities and housing choice for New Zealanders.

Today’s changes to funding and financing tools, together with freeing up urban land both inside and at the edge of our cities is a massive feat for:

• urban nerds,
• proponents of economic growth,
• champions of housing affordability, and
• all New Zealanders really.

Solving our housing crisis is my top priority. It will mean a more productive, wealthier, and more prosperous New Zealand and I won’t rest until that’s done.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Check against delivery.

Kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Phil, for the opportunity to speak to you today to the Business NZ Health Forum.

Since my appointment as Health Minister, I’ve spent time where it matters most – on the frontline, listening to the people our health system is here to serve.

Let me tell you about just a few stories I have heard.

There are many positive stories of people receiving exceptional healthcare:

• A Tauranga woman who recently shared her gratitude with me that her chemotherapy drug is now funded because of the Government’s record investment in new cancer drugs.
• A young person in distress, whose family isn’t sure what to do, being helped by compassionate youth mental health services to work through how to cope.
• A security guard I met who said he went to an Emergency Department and was seen and discharged in 2.5 hours.

But some are more grim:

• An elderly man who requires hip and knee surgery and has been living in pain while they wait for their operations.
• A cancer survivor who is overdue for their colonoscopy.
• A person who is worried about a friend that has been waiting for surgery for over for 15 months, only to find out it has been cancelled.

The failure of our health system doesn’t stop at waiting lists.

• I’ve heard of a grandmother sent home after waiting for hours in ED, only to return shortly after having had a stroke.
• A grandfather lying in a hospital ward for days, sick and in pain, not knowing when—or if—a doctor would come to see him and tell him what is wrong.
• And I’ve heard far too many stories over the past five weeks of people who are alive today, not because the system looked after them, but because their wives, husbands, daughters, and sons had to make lots of noise until someone paid attention.

That’s not a health system that works.

And if you ask the doctors, nurses, midwives, and other health professionals who keep the system running, they’ll tell you the same thing.

They are just as frustrated—because they got into this job to care for people and provide world-class healthcare to New Zealanders.

But the system is failing their patients and them too.

Somewhere along the way, our health system became desensitised to patients.

There’s often too much focus on what the unions, the colleges, or professional lobby groups say, and not enough focus on what the patient says.

Because in healthcare, the customer is the patient—the mum with the newborn, the tradie, the farmer, the kaumātua, the grandmother.

They should be at the heart of every decision we make.

People working in health have been conditioned to substandard management and conditioned to giving into groups which exert pressure on them.

This is not the standard we should accept in New Zealand.

That’s why we must fix the system—so that every patient gets the care they deserve, and every healthcare professional is empowered to do the job they trained so long and hard for.

New Zealanders expect better. And under this Government, we will deliver it.

A long-term problem made worse by Labour

Let’s be clear—this is not a new problem.

Our health system has been overloaded and under pressure for years. But the decisions of the previous government made it significantly worse. We inherited a health system in a state of turmoil.

In the middle of a pandemic—when New Zealand needed stability—they ripped the entire structure apart.

They forced through one of the biggest bureaucratic restructures in our history, abolishing 20 District Health Boards overnight and replacing them with a single, centralised bureaucracy.

The reforms stripped decision-making away from regions and districts.

They had no plan for how it would actually help patients.

Key health targets – used to ensure the system was delivering for patients – were dumped.

Instead of supporting frontline workers, they created another layer of bureaucratic management and confusion at the top.

Instead of focusing on patient care and ensuring people didn’t get sicker languishing on ballooning waiting lists, they produced internal reports and shuffled job titles in the head office.

Instead of keeping control of spending, they lost complete oversight of the system’s finances.

To put it frankly, the previous government’s 2022 health reforms were rushed and poorly implemented, with disastrous results.

Most importantly, those reforms eroded the trust and confidence of New Zealanders in getting access to the health services they need.

It’s not just our view. It’s not just what frontline workers and patients say. It’s now documented fact.

The Deloitte Report – Labour’s health system failure in black and white

Today, a report by Deloitte titled the ‘Financial Review of Health New Zealand’—an independent report, not written by politicians, but by financial and operational experts – is being released on Health New Zealand’s website.

It delivers a damning verdict on the state of our health system when we took office 16 months ago.

The report shows, in black and white, that under the previous government, Health New Zealand lost control of the critical levers that drive financial and delivery outcomes.

In simple terms:

• The agency that was supposed to run our health system had no idea how it was spending its money or the results it was achieving.
• Costs spiralled out of control, with deficits mounting each month.
• Basic financial oversight collapsed, meaning no accountability, no performance tracking, and no ability to measure success or failure.
• No systems in place to manage funds appropriately.

Meanwhile, Labour’s plan was to support unions over patients.

As I mentioned earlier, they scrapped health targets, so they didn’t even know what success looked like.

The result?

• Elective surgeries plummeted. In 2017, 1,037 people were waiting over four months for elective treatment. By the time Labour left office, that number had grown to 27,497. That’s an increase of over 2,551 percent.
• Emergency department wait times blew out. When National left office, almost 90 percent of patients were seen within six hours. By 2023, that dropped below 70 percent.
• Childhood immunisation rates collapsed. In 2017, 92.4 percent of children were fully immunised at 24 months. By 2023, that number hit 83 percent.
• Primary healthcare was ignored. More people than ever couldn’t see a healthcare professional when they needed one.

This is a system under significant pressure and a system which was recklessly mismanaged under the past government, thrown into turmoil at the worst possible time, and left to drift without accountability.

But that changes today.

Funding for Health

There is always a need for more investment in health, but more money isn’t the only solution.

This Government has invested a record funding boost of $16.68 billion (over three years) in health to help the sector plan for the future, and that includes funding expected growth.

The funding boost provided by this Government is enabling Health New Zealand to retain capacity at the frontline and deliver more services to New Zealanders.

There are more frontline staff, including more nurses than ever before and more medical staff, allied and scientific staff, and care and support staff.

Since it was set up, Health New Zealand’s frontline staff grew by almost 6,500 people, alongside achieving back-office efficiencies.

Remuneration for health workforces has also increased.

Since 2014, average salaries for nurses and midwives have increased by almost 70 percent, while average salaries for teachers and police have only risen by approximately 35-40 percent over the same period.

The average salary of a registered nurse (including senior nurses) is currently around $125,660, including overtime and allowances. This aligns with nurses in New South Wales.

Yet we are not seeing the results we have invested in.

Productivity is declining and has not kept pace with historic levels of funding and workforce growth.

For example, in the decade between 2014 and 2024, core Health operating funding almost doubled, but the number of first specialist assessments undertaken only increased by 17 percent. The waiting list more than doubled during this period to almost 195,000 people.

And as at August last year, over 40 percent of adults needing to see a GP couldn’t get a consultation within a week of when they needed to see one.

Every single dollar must deliver better outcomes for patients.

More money going in must mean more results coming out.

But under Labour, we saw more money with worse outcomes, longer waitlists, and declining service levels. That is simply unacceptable.

What we have done – A back-to-basics approach

Since being in office, this Government has been taking action and we are getting results:

• We reinstated health targets—because what gets measured, gets done.
• We’re doing more operations. Last year, the health system carried out over 144,000 elective procedures – 10,000 more than the previous 12 months.
• We are moving resources back to the frontline, cutting wasteful bureaucracy.
• The health workforce is being paid more.
• We’re investing in health infrastructure—building new hospitals, upgrading existing ones, and modernising equipment. There are currently 66 Ministerially approved health infrastructure projects, worth a cumulative $6.3 billion in the pipeline.
• We have begun stabilising the system, although there’s still a long way to go.

But let me be clear—this is just the beginning.

My five key priorities as Minister

Healthcare is a top priority for everyone in New Zealand.

I see it every day as an electorate MP, a father of three young children, and as Health Minister travelling the country.

Yes, there will always be a need for more money in healthcare, and as Minister, I will fight every single day to invest more and deliver more for you.

I am proud of the investment this Government is putting into health.

However, I will also be holding the system to account to deliver more for the funding that is being invested.

Investing in primary care and funding additional operations are at the heart of my five clear priorities as Health Minister. They are:

1. Stabilising Health New Zealand’s governance and accountability allowing it to focus on delivering the basics
2. Reducing emergency department wait times
3. Delivering a boost in elective surgery volumes to get on top of the backlog and reduce waiting lists
4. Fixing primary care to ensure easier access
5. Providing clarity on the health infrastructure investment pipeline.

1. Focusing Health New Zealand on delivering the basics

My first priority is getting the basics right. It follows years of worsening results being the only thing being delivered.

We are going to turn this around by focusing on delivery and achieving targets. Our health targets matter because they demonstrate performance.

But it’s not enough to have them on paper—we must deliver real results.

Over the last few years, the previous Government’s decision to restructure in the middle of a pandemic—and to remove those targets—led us to where we are now.

Too many people are waiting too long for critical assessments and treatments.

Health New Zealand should run a health system, not a bureaucracy. Instead of focusing on patients, it got lost in process. That changes now.

No more excuses. We measure success in one way: better outcomes for patients.

Health New Zealand has struggled to come together as a cohesive team that supports the organisation to deliver for patients.

Senior Leadership Team members have only just begun weekly in-person meetings, and have continued to operate from different offices, despite the majority living in Auckland and the organisation being two and a half years old.

This has meant the organisation has failed to create a cohesive team to lead the organisation forward.

Today, I’m outlining my expectations for Health NZ to deliver a nationally planned and consistent, but locally delivered, health system.

I expect core services (infrastructure, data, digital, HR, comms) will sit at head office, with national executive leadership focused on national programmes, shared services, overall governance and planning and empowering districts.

I have directed the Commissioner to accelerate the shift to local decision-making and service delivery, and set a requirement for local delivery plans to be developed. I expect this to be done by July.

This will enable local leaders to plan effectively, be clear about their budgets, allocate resource to where it’s most needed, and deliver better outcomes for their communities.

Because all healthcare is local.

I expect there to be strong regional coordination to support local delivery, with singular lines of accountability flowing from the national executive level through to the frontline.

Under Labour, financial controls vanished, clinical input was lost, and local districts were disempowered. We are restoring that.

Today, I have issued a new letter of expectation and Health New Zealand has released its delivery plan to reflect this.

I will also bring back a board for Health New Zealand.

Now that the plan is set, it is time to begin the process of transitioning to traditional governance.

In the coming weeks, nominations open for the new board. If you have passion for healthcare and a demonstrated track record of delivery, we need you.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Commissioners for their work to date and I look forward to working with them as they deliver on their plan and as we transition to a board.

2. Fixing Primary Healthcare – easier access for everyone

My second priority is ensuring timely GP access.

New Zealand has a shortage of family doctors, who play an important role in helping Kiwis to stay well and out of emergency departments.

But last year a third of GP practices had their books closed, forcing people to emergency departments.

And if you can’t book in to see your GP or nurse when you need one, you end up in ED when you shouldn’t have to.

No one should wait weeks to see a GP and we are set on fixing that.

Historically, more funding has been invested in more costly hospital and specialist services at the expense of primary and community care.

Over the past five years, hospital funding has increased at a higher rate than primary and community funding. Hospital funding went up by almost 53 percent, while primary and community funding increased by 41 percent.

This means we’re missing opportunities for earlier and less costly interventions.

We must shift the dial towards primary care, both to improve access for New Zealanders and because it is the fiscally responsible thing to do.

We have already made a number of important announcements this week about how we will improve access to primary care including:

• Making it easier for New Zealanders to see a doctor. We’re providing up to 100 clinical placements for overseas-trained doctors to work in primary care. This will support their transition into GP practices that need them most.
• We are also ramping up the number of trainee GPs to give Kiwis better access to healthcare in their communities. We’re introducing a funded primary care pathway to registration for up to 50 New Zealand-trained graduate doctors each year from 2026.
• We’re training more new doctors. During the term of this Government, medical school placement have increased by 100 places each year.
• We’re investing to increase the number of nurses in primary care. This includes supporting GP practices and other providers outside hospitals to hire up to 400 graduate registered nurses a year from this year.
• Improving access to 24/7 digital care. This will provide all New Zealanders with better and faster access to video consultations with New Zealand-registered clinicians, such as GPs and nurse practitioners, for urgent problems, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. People will be able to be diagnosed, get prescriptions, be referred for lab tests or radiology, and have urgent referrals organised.

These measures focus on giving our primary care workforce the numbers and support they need, so that when you or your whānau need to see a GP, you can—without facing weeks-long wait times or closed books.

Strengthening urgent and after-hours care will also be a focus of mine as part of our plan to enable faster access to primary care, and work on this is underway.

This week I also announced that Health New Zealand has agreed to deliver a $285 million uplift to funding over three years for general practice from 1 July, in addition to the capitation uplift general practice receives annually.

This will be incentivise GPs to improve access and patient outcomes – especially around improved vaccination rates and supporting family doctors to undertake minor planned services.

This is just the start – there is more to do. Health New Zealand has work underway to rethink how we fund primary care to make it faster, more accessible, and more sustainable.

3. Reducing ED wait times

My third priority is emergency departments, which have seen lengthy wait times continue to increase since targets were scrapped.

The ED target is not just about making sure patients are seen quickly but it pushes every part of the hospital to work smoothly.

Emergency departments are the beating hearts of hospitals – if they are operating efficiently and effectively, that reflects the effectiveness and efficiency of every part of the hospital. If wait times are too slow in the ED department it indicates problems throughout the hospital.

I expect Health New Zealand to:

1. Empower clinicians at local levels to fix bottlenecks in real time.
2. Integrate the primary care reforms, so fewer preventable cases end up in ED. This will be done by hiring and training more doctors and nurses and ensuring New Zealanders have access to round-the-clock care.

The relationship between our hospitals and primary care is critically important, but has broken down in recent years and needs to be fixed.

Empowering the primary care sector can help keep people out of hospital and manage patients much more cost effectively in our communities.

We need our hospitals working with our primary health care providers to achieve this, and we need many more hospital services delivered locally in communities rather than centrally in our hospitals.

We are restoring a focus on ED shorter stay targets, forcing real improvements across the entire hospital.

We want to see 95 percent of people admitted, discharged, or transferred from an emergency department within six hours.

4. Clearing the elective surgery backlog

My fourth priority is elective surgeries, where 27,497 people were waiting more than four months for surgeries they desperately needed in September 2023—a number that was 1,037 under National in 2017.

This backlog is unacceptable and has unfortunately grown since we came to Government.

But we have arrested the decline in the number of operations. As I mentioned earlier, last financial year, the health system carried out 10,000 more elective procedures than in the previous 12 months.

However, we must still urgently increase the volume of surgeries.

The elective surgery wait list target isn’t just about measuring performance of the system, it is about people. Behind every number is an individual, a family, many waiting in pain and families anxious for their loved ones to have the surgery they need.

We can’t keep doing things the way we currently do it.

At the moment Health NZ undertakes both elective surgery, and also responds to acute need, with planned elective surgery often being disrupted by acute need, leaving patients waiting for treatment and waitlists continuing to grow.

At the same time, the small amount of planned care that is outsourced to the private sector is often done on an ad hoc basis, meaning Health New Zealand is paying premium prices.

This practice must stop. Kiwis waiting in pain for an operation aren’t worried about who is delivering the operation, they just want it done as quickly as possible.

I want to see Health NZ both lifting its own performance on elective surgeries, but also partnering closely with the private sector to ensure we can get on top of the waitlists and get kiwis the operations they need as quickly as possible.

By partnering with the private sector, we can ensure people get the care they need, and Health New Zealand can achieve value for money through long-term contracts with the private sector.

I expect Health New Zealand to work closely with ACC – which already has many of these arrangements in place – to ensure value for money for taxpayers and faster treatment for patients.

Today I am pleased to announce the first part of this plan with Health New Zealand investing $50 million between now and the end of June this year to reduce the backlog of people waiting for elective surgeries. That will see an extra 10,579 procedures carried out between now and the middle of this year, with work also underway now to negotiate longer term agreements.

This will improve the quality of life of thousands of New Zealanders. It will mean people can return to work, take up hobbies again, and continue to build precious memories with loved ones.

I can also announce that I have asked Health New Zealand to work with the private sector to agree a set of principles that will underpin future outsourcing contracts. This will include:

• Ending the use of expensive ad hoc, shorter-term contracts for elective surgeries.
• Negotiating longer-term, multi-year agreements to deliver better value for money and better outcomes for patients.
• Agreeing on plans to recruit, share, and train staff which already bridge both the public and private hospitals.

Long term, I want as much planned care as possible to be delivered in partnership with the private sector, freeing public hospitals for acute needs.

However, this needs to be done in a way which is mutually beneficial for our public health system and our workforce.

To be clear, the system remains publicly funded, so everyone has access, but this will allow Health New Zealand to leverage private capacity to reduce wait times for patients.

5. Investing in health infrastructure – building for the future

My fifth priority is infrastructure—physical and digital. Our hospitals and data systems are in dire need of upgrade.

Health New Zealand is grappling with an outdated infrastructure that is inhibiting changes to models of care that improve patient outcomes and drive efficiencies.

Currently:

• Health New Zealand has about 1,200 buildings – some have significant seismic risks, other older buildings are not clinically fit for purpose.
• Digital infrastructure is also fragmented. There are an estimated 6,000 applications and 100 digital networks. That equates to roughly one application for every 16 Health New Zealand staff members, which is unsustainable.

We need solutions. That includes:

• Investigating creating a separate Health Infrastructure Entity under Health New Zealand, to manage and deliver physical and digital assets.
• Publishing a long-term plan for health infrastructure so Kiwis know what’s being upgraded across New Zealand and can see a 10-year pipeline of capital projects
• Putting all funding and financing options on the table—this will require bold, sustainable investment.

Health infrastructure has been neglected for decades.

We’re turning that around. There are currently health infrastructure projects, worth a cumulative $6.3 billion in the pipeline.

That includes:

• A new hospital in Dunedin.
• Modern cancer treatment facilities in Hawke’s Bay and Taranaki
• The extensive facilities infrastructure remediation programme at Auckland City Hospital and Greenlane Clinical Centre, and
• Manukau Health Park and Hillmorton specialist mental health services in Christchurch.

Hospitals don’t run on press releases; they run on real investment. We are delivering that.

Stripping out bureaucracy, demanding delivery

At the end of the day, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

It comes down to results, accountabilities, and every single person in the health system playing their part.

My message to Health New Zealand is simple: I expect delivery. I expect a back-to-basics approach, with less talk and more action.

I expect a relentless focus on improving health outcomes for New Zealanders and for Health New Zealand to reallocate baseline funding to implement immediate action.

We’ve had enough talk. It’s time to fix this system.

A health system that delivers for every New Zealander

New Zealanders don’t want more reports or more excuses—they want action:

• Health targets are back.
• We’re taking action to stabilise surgery waitlists.
• More doctors and nurses are being trained and recruited.
• Hospitals are being upgraded.
• Primary care is being strengthened.

This isn’t just talk; it’s real change.

And I promise every New Zealander: we will not stop until our health system delivers timely, quality care to all.

We are embarking on this shift with urgency.

Patients come first.

And this Government will not rest until that’s a reality.

Thank you very much.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good afternoon!

I want to acknowledge the immense amount of work Minister Bishop has done in leading this Going for Housing Growth programme – it is vitally important.

As the Minister flagged, central to Going for Housing Growth is this idea that growth should pay for growth, and a key tension in this system centres on finding a balance between certainty about where growth will occur and having the flexibility to respond to demand.

The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act (IFFA) hits both of these things – it levies those benefitting from the infrastructure and is an important piece in this responsiveness puzzle, enabling demand-led growth without further straining councils’ balance sheets.

However, we’ve become aware of barriers to its use, so we’re making some changes to make it fit for purpose, which I’ve been tasked with leading.

IFFA background

The IFFA emerged from a great example of the market innovating to solve coordination problems and deliver benefits much sooner than the public sector could have. 

Developers saw an opportunity at Milldale to deliver housing but needed infrastructure to enable that to happen.

Unable to rely on a council constrained by its own growth plans and lack of funds, the developers set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to raise the finance needed to deliver the infrastructure and then levied the subsequent landowners to repay the debt.

Recognising the value of this approach, the government at the time rightly sought to codify this to be replicated around the country, culminating in the IFFA.

In addition to providing a responsive, market-led pathway to enable greenfield development, the IFFA has several benefits.

It can enable intensification in existing urban areas by funding and financing infrastructure upgrades.

As the SPV is off balance sheet, it preserves council debt headroom while delivering additional infrastructure capacity. 

It ensures revenue streams are certain and are hypothecated to the relevant infrastructure.

It ensures fairness in that those who benefit pay – it spreads the infrastructure costs over a longer period of time and, therefore, more fairly across the beneficiaries over that infrastructure’s lifespan.

Yet, its responsive, market-led vision has not been realised.

No further greenfield deal has been done since the IFFA’s Milldale inspiration, with only two city-wide levies have been struck.

We set out to understand why, and we have gone about fixing it.

Streamline levy development and approval

We’ve heard the process for standing up an IFFA transaction is unnecessarily burdensome and costly.

A range of requirements are duplicated and redundant, which slow the process without adding any real benefit.

A Minister doesn’t need to be bogged down with immaterial technical detail, and we don’t need ambiguities that arbitrarily leave some important matters neglected.

We’re making a range of detailed changes to address this.

Our focus is to ensure the right information is available in the right format at the right time to make the right decisions.

There is also an embedded suggestion that a Minister is somehow always the best arbiter of what’s reasonable and affordable, even where affordability is already internalised.

While we acknowledge the decision to impose a levy on existing ratepayers is a serious one, if a greenfield levy is proposed by the developer with skin in the game, or everyone affected otherwise consents, we are now going to take the wild approach of trusting that they’re acting in their own best interests.

Increasing uptake

Extending access to a variety of users 

Last year, Cabinet made the decision to extend the scope of the IFFA to cover water entities under Local Water Done Well, and now we’re extending it further to NZTA projects. 

This will mean major transport projects can recover a share of the infrastructure cost from those who benefit from an increase in development capacity, helping growth pay for growth and adding to the potential funding stack.

Supporting developer-led proposals

Part of the current process requires a levy to be endorsed by levy and infrastructure authorities, such as councils, before a proposal can be progressed, with no clear criteria to limit obstruction.

In pursuit of responsiveness and growth, we are making changes that will require the endorsements to be given where statutory requirements are met.

We cannot afford to give a licence to say ‘no’, so we’re not going to give it.

Deferrals

We’re also moving to enable levy payment flexibility.

While infrastructure adds value to properties which benefit, and generally increases wealth, annual levies may be difficult to provide for when property owners may not have much financial headroom.

We’re therefore introducing levy deferral options, so property owners can defer payment to a later date or until a specified triggering event. 

Ensuring deferral options are reflected clearly and transparently will mean all parties can make better decisions, including the responsible Minister through the affordability assessment.

Project eligibility

Currently, there is ambiguity about whether projects commissioned prior to when a levy proposal is submitted are eligible, so we’re clarifying that projects commissioned up to two years prior will be. 

This will extend coverage to circumstances where projects may have recently been completed but house sales have yet to occur.

Use for development levies

With the advent of the development levies Minister Bishop has just announced, we’re also making changes to help them work together with the IFFA.

If a developer is facing the prospect of big development levy for council-provided infrastructure, there may be demand for the IFFA to finance this to be repaid by future homeowners.

For this use case, we are removing the requirement that IFFA levies have a direct link to specific bulk infrastructure.

Other changes

There are a range of other changes, such as:

• SPVs getting explicit powers to commence recovery action for unpaid levies
• councils being able to request reimbursement of levy administration costs as a condition of endorsement
• introducing flexibility about where the infrastructure must be vested
• putting levies on an even keel with rates in the event of a rating sale
• several other minor, technical, and remedial tweaks.

Together, these changes will deliver a more usable pathway for IFFA deals that can be accessed by developers and others.

The objective is to deliver infrastructure that may not have been planned by councils or planned for in the timeframe that developers need it.

Conclusion

While the IFFA is relatively technical, it is a very important tool, and it has a key role in facilitating demand-led growth.

By streamlining processes and improving usability, and having National Infrastructure Funding and Financing (NIFF) engaged to assist councils and others with expertise and growing capacity, we expect the IFFA will be much more attractive and used much more widely.

We need growth, and growth must be responsive to demand.

The IFFA has a distinct and important role in delivering this.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

It is a pleasure for the New Zealand to be in Ulaanbaatar this afternoon. The welcome has been warm, even if the temperatures outside have not been. Though, your Ambassador tells me the temperature reached +1 degrees Celsius at midday today! Thank you to Foreign Minister Battsetseg for your generous hosting.

Despite our geographic distance, New Zealand and Mongolia share many commonalities: both small states committed to democracy, multilateralism, and the international rules-based order.

We also share proportional representation electoral systems, New Zealand since 1996, and Mongolia since 2024.

The New Zealand-Mongolia relationship is warm and long-standing. It is significant that this year we are marking 50 years since diplomatic relations were established in 1975. This is a seriously important milestone.

It was valuable exchanging views and experiences today with the Minister and colleagues, and discussing our respective regional and international priorities.

The New Zealand community here in Mongolia is small, but an important element to our relationship. We thank the New Zealand community – and Mongolians in New Zealand – for their support for this relationship, and for continuing to find exciting new ways to connect our countries.

Ties between our people continue to deepen. We continue to welcome Mongolian scholars to New Zealand, including through the long-standing English Language Training for Officials (“ELTO”) programme.

New Zealand is also pleased to provide targeted support to Mongolian NGOs and other groups through the New Zealand Embassy Fund. This has included support for sheep-shearer training programmes. This might sound ordinary, but shearing is a critical part of ensuring productivity!

This year we are contributing towards a rural water project, which will support over 100 families to access the water supply system. We are also helping Mongolian herders to build climate change resilience.

Once again, thank you to Foreign Minister Battsetseg and other senior Mongolian colleagues for your generous hosting on this important occasion.

And allow me to reiterate one last time what a special significance it is for me to be here today.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good morning, everybody.

It’s great to see such a good cross-section of people from local government here today.

Against a backdrop of skyrocketing rates and massive cost of living pressures, a lot has been made recently of the need to go ‘back to basics’ and to ‘go for growth.’

These two things are critically linked.

Moving back to basics means consciously reducing government scope to the bare minimum and avoiding unnecessary intervention in people’s lives.

Reduced intervention frees people to do what they do best, and unlocks potential gains in efficiency, innovation, and productivity – all vital ingredients to deliver economic growth.

With this in mind, it’s heartening to join you on a day focused on showing communities value, and sharpening councils’ value stories.

However, I’m aware that the ability to sharpen value stories is inherently constrained when working with such a blunting instrument as the Resource Management Act.

The RMA’s downfall

There are endless examples of the absurdity that’s ensued under the RMA. Every week I am reading new articles, receiving new letters, and hearing new stories about the obstruction it has delivered.

I think of the letter I received from an Upper Hutt man who was blocked from cutting down a tree on his own property, assessed as dangerous by both his neighbour and an arborist – a generic pin oak not even listed on the plan.

I think of Tracy Fleet in Ashburton who, facing a similar situation, was slapped with a $7000 fine and a criminal conviction for pruning a tree so dangerous insurers were turning away, after a years-long, strung-out saga that was also swallowing up her ratepayer dollars in the process.

I think of Curt and Tricia Zant whose Hawke’s Bay farm was slapped with an ‘Outstanding Natural Feature’ classification in the council’s plan, restricting their ability to invest time, care, and capital into their land to drive the growth we’re seeking, without any compensation for their loss – I’ll come back to this.

I think of Datagrid whose land provides a great location to invest in a data centre and subsea cable network expansion. This would capitalise on the window of opportunity that is the spiking demand for data storage and faster connectivity in the age of artificial intelligence and the cloud. How ironic that this immense growth opportunity has been stalled by the imposition of a so-called ‘highly productive’ classification on their land, tying them up in consenting quicksand to protect a turnip crop.

I think of attempts to build a new McDonald’s, Starbucks, Burger King, or even a supermarket, where the RMA’s breadth has somehow gotten us to a point where vexatious objectors have been able to weaponise any number of irrelevant ‘effects’ to obstruct things they don’t like.

These are just some of the many examples up and down this country where people and organisations, big and small, are facing massive restrictions on the use of their property, too often for tenuous reasons enabled by the RMA that amount to little more than subjective ‘vibe’.

Whether it’s protecting dangerous trees, debating the vibe of landscapes and architecture, pontificating on how a property owner should best use their own land, or having to consider all manner of reckons – from the health profile of food to the competition ‘effects’ of a new business – the current council ‘value’ story is a hard one to tell.

The solution

The good news is that our commitment to replace the RMA with a system based on property rights will reduce the scope of resource management and liberate councils to focus on things that actually deliver value for ratepayers.

Last year, Cabinet agreed the principles and direction that would guide the replacement.

First things first: we must narrow the scope of the system to focus on material effects, and to promote the enjoyment of property rights. As is clear from the examples above, and countless others, the RMA tries to do too many things, and in doing so has become a vehicle to stifle growth. 

When the RMA was developed, the key downfall was integrating management of development and the environment into one purpose, which has treated development as a privilege. We’re going to change that by replacing the RMA with two Acts with distinct purposes – one to manage environmental effects arising from activities and another to enable urban development and infrastructure.

Councils will have clarity on what environmental effects and domains need managing, what needs to be considered when setting limits appropriate to their regions, and the tools available to manage resources within those limits. These tools should include innovative methods for things like water allocation and discharges, so scarce resources go to where they’re needed most, and supply can respond to demand.

What is not negotiable, though, is that human needs will be met. Frustrating development to resist growth doesn’t abate the need for it, nor does it change the reality that human existence necessarily has effects on the environment. If development cannot occur within an environmental limit in one place, then it must occur in another. But development must, and will, occur.

Through codifying into standards established and accepted ways of undertaking activities, the new system will liberate councils from the regulatory anxiety which demands consents and treats applications for common activities like road construction as a potential extermination event. When we’ve done most things in most places before, there’s no reason to start from scratch each time.

Spatial planning will be a core feature, with several important roles. It will separate incompatible land uses, provide protection for infrastructure, and identify natural hazards. The separation of incompatible land uses will be a key mechanism for managing potential neighbourhood effects like noise, odour, and the likes.

A stricter effects-based system with a no duplication rule means stripping out regulation and consenting for anything that has no material effects on the natural environment or another property owner, is covered by and complies with another law or national standard, or is subject to a private agreement among all affected parties.

A stricter effects-based system also means limiting who gets a say on what others do with their property if they are not directly affected. Gone will be the days of every Tom, Dick, and Harry sticking their noses into other people’s business at the other end of the country.

All of this will go some way to respecting property rights.

However, for potential situations where management of genuine effects presents residual friction with property rights, we must ask ourselves through this process “who benefits from such a constraint?” and, therefore, “who should bear the cost?”

For example, coming back to the case of the Zants’ issues under the current system – should they be the ones to pay the price of someone else’s decision that the landscape their property sits on is ‘outstanding’ to look at? What incentives does this this create for making sound decisions about what is outstanding when it is costless to the decision maker?

Through all this change to unshackle people from the burdensome approach of up-front consenting, Cabinet has also recognised a corresponding need for a strong compliance monitoring and enforcement regime, ensuring accountability among system participants so this replacement system delivers for both development and the environment.

Conclusion

This is just a sample of some of the key elements to be determined as we shore up the design of the new system, and no doubt there will be interest across other areas – from the role of a planning tribunal type function, to the shift to one plan per region, and beyond.

With the Resource Management Expert Advisory Group now having taken Cabinet’s direction and developed a draft blueprint for RMA replacement, there will be more to share in due course.

One thing that is clear, though, is that engagement of key system participants is important.

Local government is a critical system participant, so I encourage you to take the opportunity to feed into this reform, 

Because liberalising resource management is a critical step in helping councils sharpen their value stories and unlocking the innovation and economic growth we so desperately need.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Two new members have been appointed to the board of Eden Park Trust, Sport and Recreation Minister Mark Mitchell says.

“Marama Royal MNZM (Ngāti Whātua) and Hon Simon Bridges (Ngāti Maniapoto) will be bringing their extensive governance experience and passion for the Auckland region to support the leadership of New Zealand’s largest stadium.

“I am confident that these appointments will add fresh perspectives and expertise to help lead Eden Park through the current conversations about the park’s future.

“Marama Royal MNZM is Chair of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust Board and has extensive governance experience. She is an esteemed and experienced iwi leader who will bring significant governance experience, strong networks and deep understanding of the whenua to the role. 

“Hon Simon Bridges is well known for his political experience where he served in several Cabinet positions, and more recently for his role as CEO of Auckland Business Chamber. His experience in both political and commercial settings offer unique perspective, skillset, and networks that would enable the board to thrive.

“I have also reappointed Kereyn Smith CNZM and Bill Birnie CNZM as members of the board to continue their steadfast commitment to the future of Eden Park. 

“These appointments and reappointments will ensure strong leadership and a commitment to the future success of New Zealand’s iconic stadium,” says Mr Mitchell.

“I also acknowledge outgoing members, Victoria Toon and Renata Blair, whose terms ended in February.  They have been influential in supporting relationships with residents, iwi and commercial entities, and I thank them for their services to the board over the years.”

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

A pilot programme that will help financial technology (fintech) firms shake up competition in the financial and banking sectors is now underway, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson.

“Our Government is focused on improving competition in the areas that matter most to Kiwis. The financial and banking sectors are among the most crucial to our everyday lives and our economic growth – however, they are often criticised as being among the most regulated and, some say, least competitive,” says Mr Simpson.

“We have heard these concerns from the industry and have taken them seriously. I am pleased that the Financial Markets Authority has now announced the six firms that will take part in its pilot ‘regulatory sandbox’ programme, which was announced late last year.

“The sandbox is a testing ground where fintechs can experiment with new products and services in a controlled environment, ensuring they comply with regulations, before doing a full commercial launch.

“The benefits of this programme reach all corners of our economy. For consumers, it opens the door wide for new and innovative solutions that will challenge traditional banks and boost competition, providing more choices about how people manage their money, investments, and day-to-day transactions.

“For fintechs, it means having the freedom and guidance to develop new products and services that will not only benefit customers but also help them supercharge New Zealand’s economic growth. I expect the sandbox will enable firms to save time, reduce costs, and bring innovative products to market sooner.

“Fintechs are exactly the kind of high-value companies that we want to see thrive in New Zealand, but regulatory barriers have prevented them from competing on a level playing field. That’s why our Government is identifying and removing these barriers to support a thriving, scalable fintech industry in New Zealand.

“Our Government also recognises the potential of fintechs to disrupt New Zealand’s financial services sector, increasing competition and choice for Kiwis. With open banking now on track to be operational in New Zealand by the end of the year, this is another action we are taking to help further unlock that potential.

“I look forward to seeing how the firms make use of the sandbox. I encourage them to be bold and push the boundaries as they develop innovative solutions that will bring more choice and better services to consumers.”

Notes to editors:

The firms taking part in the pilot are:

For further details on the regulatory sandbox and the firms participating in the pilot, please visit: https://www.fma.govt.nz/business/focus-areas/innovation/.

It is anticipated the firms will operate within the terms of the sandbox for a period of between 12 and 24 months. Following the pilot, the Financial Markets Authority will make a decision on whether to make the programme permanent.