Chris Bishop was at the centre of a range of decisions announced this week aimed at cutting red tape and making easier for people to do things.
Not all were without controversy.
On Sunday as Housing Minister Bishop and Commerce Minister Andrew Bayly announced they were scrapping a range of affordability regulations which the former Labour Government had introduced to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.
While the changes were meant to provide better protection for consumers against unscrupulous lenders, Bayly described them as having thrown “a bucket of cold ice over banks and financial providers by prescribing minimum steps to assess the affordability of a loan”.
He says the consequence has been that many people have struggled to get a loan to buy a house and that for those needing smaller loans, they have been forced to borrow from “high-interest loan sharks”.
Bishop says the changes will make the home loan application process simpler.
“Home buyers have had it hard enough over the past six years under Labour, what with extraordinary house price inflation, interest rates that went through the roof causing untold pain, and these ridiculous CCCFA changes making it much harder to get a mortgage,” he says.
This announcement was largely met with agreement.
Commerce Minister Andrew Bayly.
RMA disagreement
But later in the week Bishop, with his RMA Reform hat on, made another announcement about scrapping regulations, this time to make it easier for farmers and coal miners, including by relaxing regulations on freshwater management.
This announcement was greeted with strong condemnation from the Labour Party, the Greens and Greenpeace. But Water New Zealand also raised concerns, particularly about the plan to relax water regulations.
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell also released the report of the Government Inquiry into the North Island Severe Weather Events this week.
As Mitchell bluntly put it, the report reveals New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are significant gaps that need to be addressed.
It seems extraordinary the inquiry would find such glaring gaps in the system, given in recent times the country has experienced the Canterbury earthquakes and the Kaikoura earthquake, as well as a number of weather events, even if not as serious as Cyclone Gabrielle. But surely lessons learned from the earthquakes would have addressed at least some of the gaps in the emergency management system?
As Mitchell notes the criticism is not aimed at individuals – who he says do an incredible job in emergency events – but at the system as a whole.
“We need to ensure New Zealand’s emergency management system is appropriate for responding to future emergency events because lives and livelihoods are at stake.”
Mark Mitchell.
Improving emergency management
He acknowledges 15 people died in the North Island weather events and one person remains missing, while the lives of many others were changed forever.
The report he received sits alongside an independent review done into Hawke’s Bay civil defence emergency management response to Cyclone Gabrielle, which raised similar questions.
As a result, once he has considered the report’s recommendations more fully Mitchell intends to introduce new legislation this parliamentary term, as well as make improvements to the system which do not require legislative change.
Labour supports changes being made and its emergency management spokesperson Camilla Belich has urged the Government to implement the report’s recommendations, including making legislative changes, as soon as possible.
The Government’s ‘tough on crime’ approach also took another step forward with Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announcing the Government will bring back a revised three strikes law. Originally introduced in 2010 the previous strikes legislation was repealed by Labour in 2022.
The new regime will cover the same 40 serious violent and sexual offences as the previous legislation but also add the new strangulation and suffocation offence. It will only apply to sentences above 24 months and extend the use of the “manifestly unjust” exception to allow some judicial discretion to avoid very harsh outcomes.
“We are sending a strong message that repeat offending will not be tolerated,” McKee says.
She intends to take the draft bill to Cabinet by the end of June and introduce it to Parliament soon after that.
American style
But the Greens describe it as an “American style” approach to justice which as failed before and will fail again.
“If the Government genuinely cared about addressing people’s concerns about crime then it could take action to address the causes of offending, including mental healthcare, addiction treatment, housing and liveable income support, while introducing a new pathway away from prisons,” Green justice spokesperson Tamatha Paul says.
Labour described the announcement as political posturing, with its justice spokesperson Duncan Webb saying the previous three strikes legislation had not reduced serious offending as both Act and National had said it would.
“This legislation has not even been to Cabinet yet, so it is an announcement about an announcement in an attempt to look tough, when the evidence all shows this doesn’t work,” Webb says.
Public service cuts continued during the week, with the Public Service Association saying the Customs Service has proposed to cut 79 jobs, including from ports and airports, and that the Department of Internal Affairs is cutting 41 roles to do with digital harm, child exploitation, money laundering, counter terrorism and other regulatory roles.
“The false promise of ‘no cuts to the frontline’ has again been exposed with these proposed cuts. Try telling someone who has lost their life savings to an online scam that the tracking down of these criminals is a back office function and therefore not important,” PSA assistant secretary Fleur Fitzsimons says.
Then on Wednesday came a bombshell, with Melissa Lee dumped from her media and communications portfolio and moved out of Cabinet, while Penny Simmonds lost responsibility for disability issues.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon described the demotions as part of how he rolled.
"You will continually see me do this. this is how I roll. This is how I lead," Luxon said.
Other ministers, watch out.
On Thursday the country commemorated Anzac Day.
