"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he wants a bureaucracy that says 'yes.' He is right to want that of course, but a lot of current rules would need to change. ...
"New Zealand’s regulatory culture of “no” has become so pervasive that even the simplest reforms now spark fierce resistance. ... This reflexive negativity illustrates a deeper problem. New Zealand’s economy is being strangled by excessive caution and regulatory overkill.
"Some numbers are telling. Property developers now spend $1.29 billion annually navigating consent processes. ...
"The Port of Tauranga’s expansion would boost exports for forestry, kiwifruit and dairy. Yet bureaucratic delays have stalled the project for years. Eden Park operates under council-imposed event caps while New Zealanders fly to Australia for concerts in packed stadiums.
"Even our tax system seems designed to say 'no.' When businesses invest in new machinery to boost productivity, New Zealand’s depreciation provisions are among the most restrictive in the OECD. ....
"Similar patterns emerge in construction. .... The building code and certification process favour established products and make it slow and expensive for new or imported products to gain approval. Even common materials used safely for years in Australia or Europe face lengthy and costly verification processes here. The result is higher costs for builders and homeowners alike.
"Meanwhile, the banking sector faces its own regulatory headwinds. ...
"Reform need not be complex. Sometimes it simply means removing bureaucratic obstacles. Trust regulators in other developed countries rather than retesting everything here. ... But ... every change, no matter how sensible, must overcome a chorus of imagined risks and hypothetical problems. ...
"Those objecting to developments need to be confronted with the lost value to the community of getting their way.
"The Prime Minister is right about the problem of our negative and utterly risk-averse culture. But changing our bureaucratic culture requires more than speeches. It demands sustained effort to identify and eliminate unnecessary rules, requirements and restrictions. ...
"The alternative is continued decline."~ Bryce Wilkinson from his post 'Bureaucracy is strangling NZ’s potential for growth'
Monday, 24 February 2025
"The PM is right about the problem of our negative and utterly risk-averse culture. But changing our bureaucratic culture requires more than speeches."
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9 comments:
"But changing our bureaucratic culture requires more than speeches. It demands sustained effort to identify and eliminate unnecessary rules, requirements and restrictions. ..."
DOGE in other words.
Henry
No, nothing like DOGE. Even if we grant that DOGE is doing some good, it's still not eliminating unnecessary rules, requirements and restrictions. At best it's reducing some unnecessary expenditure; but not changing the rules, requirements and restrictions that led to that expenditure in the first place. Making the government over-reach 'more efficient', and reducing government over-reach are two very different things.
Mark T
So how many days has DOGE been active? Perhaps you're protesting too much, too soon (that's a tell).
Rather than coming to a conclusion BEFORE the consequences of DOGE's audit reports are known perhaps it would be rational and logical to see what those consequences turn out to be. For example, when the Pentagon and the Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and Fanny and Freddy and the Federal Reserve and...and...and...are audited by the DOGE and the huge wastes are revealed (going on present performance it is likely there will be huge wastes detected), what will be the responses? Will nothing be done or will there be changes, in particular changes which reduce taxation, regulation, restriction and the like? My guess would be that the citizens of the USA will place a lot of angry pressure on the Federal Government if changes are not forthcoming.
The changes that have happened already are substantive. They are important geopolitically. To be fair not all are as the result of DOGE (although the demise of USAID and the Dept of Education likely are). Nevertheless the USA is changing forever. The USA is already departing the Paris CO2 nonsense, EPA regs are being defanged, USA is getting out of the Ukraine nonsense, its moving away from the EU hyenas, its no longer funding destructive NGOs with their colour revolutions and the like, USA departed the LIBOR, it's emptying the LBMA, it's looking possible that the USA will depart the WHO...
This is all massive. So, back to the original issue. What will happen once DOGE's audit results are in? What changes await? Wait and see. Then make your judgements.
Henry J
Like Trump and many of his supporters you're displaying an inability to stick with the issue. The article was about how to reduce the regulatory burden in a NZ context, a context I suspect you know little about. You made the statement that "sustained effort to identify and eliminate unnecessary rules, requirements and restrictions" is "just like DOGE". That's clearly wrong, and I don't need to know all the details of what DOGE is doing, or to give them more time to conclude that. Let's assume that DOGE is doing really good work, and it may even be a forerunner to more fundamental changes later on. But that's clearly not its mandate currently. It's mandate is right there it its name - government efficiency. Making what the government does more efficient. The may well lead to a reduced financial burden on taxpayers, but it's not the same thing as eliminating the regulatory burden and scaling back what the government does.
MarkT
Stop playing the man.
Stop playing with words.
Have you read the DOGE's agenda yet? Or are you strictly ideological and just being opinionated?
I can appreciate why you think I'm "playing with words". A sane person realises words have meaning, and that meaning either aligns with the reality they're trying to achieve or not. For Trump and his supporters, words mean whatever they want them to mean. Therefore in your minds cutting a bit of expenditure is the same as cutting regulations, a country that gets attacked and invaded started the war, Zelenksky is a dictator but Putin is not, etc. You guys are really special.
Again Mark T you are playing the man. It's a tell. You need to stop.
No, I’m not playing with a man. I’m playing with a pussy.
That's OK MarkT, but it would be better not publicly boast of what you've been doing with your privates. Better to have kept that to yourself.
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