Seymour's Ministry of Regulation will be ACT's greatest legacy - Radio NZ is talking garbage trying to paint it as a money wasting hypocrisy
What has been one of the biggest drags on NZ's economic performance the past decade? Regulation and red-tape whose costs way exceed its benefits.
Have our Councils, in particular, done cost-benefit analyses to assess whether many of their stupid projects, like Wellington's idiotic new conference venue, or cycle ways that are barely used, to name but a few of thousands, were value for money? No.
How do I know? When John Key's government was in power, I investigated that specific matter and, at the time, discovered there was only one economist with this kind of expertise working in the entire Auckland City Council. His employer gave him hundreds of tasks to do, though was barely ever asked to devote any time to working out whether the projects the Council was embarking on were justified (by producing a net benefit for Auckland and the country).
I tried screaming this outrage from the rooftops. I asked a former Chair of the Reserve Bank of NZ, Arthur Grimes, about what was going on. Arthur told me our public sector "doesn't take cost-benefit analysis seriously". The only people interested in this issue turned out to be ACT party folks, and in particular, David Seymour.
The new Ministry is being done correctly. It should be staffed by a relatively small number of highly paid staff with specialized knowledge of costs and benefits of regulations.
Hipkins is talking nonsense when he argues it's hypocritical to be doing so at a time when the public sector is downsized. Where's the hypocrisy in laying off the thousands of people who Hipkins hired to "work" from home, and replacing them with 90 highly skilled folks to create efficiencies in the economy?
The White House in the US has an Office for Information and Regulatory Affairs which does similar things that Seymour's Ministry is going to do. It's a Federal office that Congress established in the 1980 Paperwork Reduction Act. It's disappointing even the Taxpayers Union doesn't seem to understand the necessity of the huge task Seymour is correctly embarking upon.
Sources:
Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. Rob blogs at Down To Earth Kiwi
express all state spending cuts in tax cut terms.
So 20,000 people added to the state sector in the 6 years of Labor we can keep them or have a reduction in tax of something like $1250 per person in NZ or $5k per family.
You risk loosing very few votes but winning many more.
Just pathetic the way the Media went along with the patent foolishness of the thought that spending money to save money was somehow hypocritical. It really is irritating the manner in which they give air to stuff that is so clearly silly.
A message to Hipkins. Is it better to spend more on active and knowledgeable help, or ten times the number of Public Servants we used to watch in the 1970's - Gliding On.
Regulation is strangling New Zealand. I would abolish local government, centralize their core functions,, and scrap the RMA overnight. We could start with a clean slate, where every proposal for a restriction of any kind needed to be justified by a full cost benefit study.
It may well be ACT's greatest legacy but due to the nature of the work that's unlikely to be understood by more than a few. Most definitely it will require the very best and brightest, wielding some real teeth, to stand any chance of turning around a public service stuffed with inefficient rules, regulations and policies, and otherwise quick to splash around taxpayer dollars on doubtful suppliers and woke crap, not to forget Maorification, and other leftist ideologically driven behaviours.