A crowd of about 600 people at ACT's sold out party conference at SkyCity Theatre this afternoon. ACT leader David Seymour drove a car sporting ACT colours onto the stage before he spoke at the conference. Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
The ACT Party is proposing a new Ministry of Regulation with the sole purpose of clearing what it calls a "jungle of red tape".
ACT leader David Seymour made the policy announcement to a crowd of around 600 at the party's annual conference at SkyCity Theatre this afternoon.
This new ministry would be given the powers to evaluate new regulatory proposals, review existing red tape and change laws to remove surplus regulation in collaboration with the relevant minister.
Seymour compared the new minister of his party's proposed 'Ministry of Regulation' to the current role of the minister of finance, who is in charge of the supply of money taxed from New Zealanders.
"New Zealand needs a regulatory equal of the finance minister - someone to act as a guardian for good regulation, just as the finance minister is supposed to mind the public purse."
He said the policy would "revolutionise" how the country was regulated and lead to increased productivity, higher wages for workers, lower prices and more innovative goods and services for consumers.
"The act will provide a benchmark for good regulation through a set of regulatory principles, including the rule of law, protection of individual liberties, protection of property rights, the imposition of taxes, and good lawmaking processes."
ACT's new ministry, funded from the baselines of Treasury and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, would be in charge of administering the new legislation.
Today's sold-out party conference featured speeches by Seymour, ACT's deputy leader Brooke van Velden, MPs Karen Chhour, Mark Cameron, Simon Court, Nicole McKee and newly-announced candidates Andrew Hoggard and Parmjeet Parmar.
Fresh off the back of a trip to Taiwan, van Velden pitched herself as "Parliament's only trained economist" and criticised the government's management of the economy and pandemic, while praising her leader for his work on the End of Life Choice bill.
"That is an example of a kind of change for the better that transcends the old red versus blue divide and showed us what one young talented MP could get done alone. Now just imagine what we could do with 15 or 20 of them," she said.
Chhour spent the bulk of her speech criticising government moves to incorporate treaty obligations into law, saying this had been done with no public consultation or explanation as to what it meant or how it would work.
The crowd broke into applause when she said ACT would repeal any laws that gave different rights based on identity, saying agencies like the child welfare system should be "100 percent colour blind."
"I have and will continue to speak out against the idea that we need to be a Tiriti (o Waitangi)-centric country, where individuals align themselves as tangata whenua or tangata tiriti. Where there is no middle ground or third option and you are forced to pick a side," she said.
Cameron said as the only working farmer in Parliament, he would ensure farmers finally had their voices heard, acknowledged and shared in the halls of power through the ACT Party.
"So many of us feel like second class citizens in our own country but rural New Zealand is a family where farmers share a love for the animals they tend, the land they're on and being on with nature."
Cameron welcomed former Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard to the party, who recently quit his job to announce he would contest he Rangitikei seat for ACT this election.
Former National MP turned ACT Party candidate Parmjeet Parmar used her speech to introduce herself to the crowd as a scientist and businesswoman while Court talked about scrapping the Resource Management Act and McKee talked about crime, firearms and freedom of speech.
ACT is shaping up to be National's natural coalition partner this election, with the latest 1News-Kantar political poll showing National and ACT could have the numbers to form the next government, and the ACT Party the numbers to grow its caucus from 10 to 15 MPs.