Implementation and Interaction

The Review will support the Economic Transformation agenda by:

Ensuring that New Zealand's regulatory environment is one that promotes economic growth, business confidence, globally competitive firms and social wellbeing, by:

• identifying clearly the objectives of the individual regulatory frameworks;
• ensuring that the legal framework is "fit for purpose" in that the nature and level of intervention meets the tests of proportionality, clarity, consistency, transparency, effectiveness and equity;
• ensuring that there is an appropriate level of self-regulation;
• identifying whether the framework needs to be (and if so can be) flexible to cater for the different characteristics of businesses within the framework;
• ensuring that the enforcement of the legal framework is focused on the objectives and proportionate to the risks of non-compliance (both likelihood and consequences); and
• coordinating and integrating centrally any information collection or dissemination, enforcement and other requirements of more than one regulatory framework applying to a single business.
• Review the interaction of particular regulatory frameworks to:
• identify problems and implement solutions that minimise compliance requirements for businesses, with a separate consideration of the impacts on SMEs when multiple frameworks intersect at the firm/product level, for example:
  • HSE, ACC and HSNO requirements;
  • The practical issues surrounding the implementation of District and Regional Plans and relevant resource consent processes, Building Act, Building Code, territory authority building consent and inspection requirements; and
  • Accreditation or Quality Assurance requirements and contract compliance requirements for public funding.
• identify adjustments that could provide that compliance with one regulator would automatically mean that compliance requirements of another regulator were met, in order to reduce compliance costs to business in a significant way, without increasing risks to any of the objectives of the frameworks or the regulators.
• consider the appropriate role of Standards, and the use of the existing Standards development process in regulatory frameworks.
• consider whether "safe harbour" provisions should be provided in legislation so that businesses, which have worked proactively with the relevant regulator and been approved as complying, can be given real comfort that they have achieved an appropriate standard and will not be "punished" for genuine error or mishap.

Undertake research to explore the ways in which enforcement strategies can be subject to a sufficient level of scrutiny to ensure that they are optimal in the particular circumstances in which they are used, i.e. the rules, and the enforcement of the rules, should be proportionate to risk.

Invite business to participate in the Review by utilising the Business Consultation website as a mechanism for business to identify specific regulatory barriers and potential solutions to government. Issues that have already been identified relate to gaming rules, transport rules and the enforcement of product standards at the border.

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