Source: ACT Party
Introduction
Thank you very much to Leeann and the team for hosting me here at Business Canterbury.
I say it every time but I’ll say it again: we need to celebrate business in this country.
Too often, when a business makes a profit, people jump to the conclusion that someone, somewhere must be losing. That’s dangerously false. A person will engage as an entrepreneur, investor, worker, or customer only if doing so will make them better off than they would have been otherwise.
Business is not exploitative, sinister, or deceptive. It’s actually very simple. Four types of people achieve together what they couldn’t do alone.
Entrepreneurs ask others to bring their ideas and dreams to life.
Investors risk their savings in the hope of greater returns than they could achieve working alone.
Workers exchange their time and talents for money to buy what they want.
Those workers become customers who give up their money to buy things they couldn’t produce by themselves.
And the best thing of all? Nobody is forced to do any of this. Business is voluntary cooperation where adults freely trade value for value and get stronger together.
Business is not only a force for good in our community, it is beautiful human cooperation.
The most important thing we can do for business is to ensure New Zealand has a sound, predictable policy environment.
Today I’d like to talk about what the Government is doing to make it easier to do business. I hope you’ll agree our deregulation program is comprehensive and coherent.
Most of all I hope you are starting to feel the effects of deregulation. I hope you can spend less time on compliance activity and more time on productive activity.
But today, I’d like to talk not just about what the Government is doing to improve the business environment, but why.
Too often in the last four decades, people who favour open markets and entrepreneurship have won the technical argument, but we have lost the cultural argument.
Yes, business is a force for good. Yes, our prosperity depends on unleashing the creative powers of a skilled and educated population. Yes, free markets and freedom generally are the vehicle for doing that.
There is nobody serious who disputes that free markets work. We now have decades of data from hundreds of countries showing free markets lead to healthier, wealthier lives.
When I hear political reporting, and most of Parliament, though, I know we still have work to do establishing the facts.
Our nation of pioneers
I’d like to talk today about how we win the cultural argument for business and markets by discovering our true national identity. It draws on the pioneering spirit that brought our ancestors to these shores in search of something better.
We are a nation of immigrants. A nation built by those who chose challenge over comfort. Our ancestors crossed the globe—not to be given something, but for the freedom to build something.
To this day, people crossing the seas to our country don’t ask for guarantees, they ask for a fair go.
Like centuries past, they don’t seek safety above all else, they seek opportunity.
And they don’t want to wait for permission—they just want to get on with building a life for themselves and their families.
As it was for my ancestors eight hundred years ago by waka, so it is for New Zealanders arriving at the international terminals of the country’s airports today. The country at the edge of the world is the frontier for people seeking freedom and we need to adopt that part of our mentality.
The Treaty debate can be seen as a simple question of what defines your life. Is it events that happened many lifetimes ago, or the choices you make in your lifetime? If you know the answer to that, you’ll be able to answer most political questions.
The problem is somewhere along the way more and more people have chosen the first option, our futures were determined long ago. Our culture hesitates. Instead of cheering on success, we eye it suspiciously. Our instinct, cultivated over decades, seems to be caution over courage, conformity over creativity.
Take last week. A firm founded by New Zealanders, Zuru, was awarded the Total Consumables Supplier of the Year award by Walmart. It’s difficult to overstate how big that is. They proudly put out a New Zealand press release. It got no coverage in the New Zealand media, but one of Zuru’s owners applying to build a helipad will provide wall-to-wall clickbait. Why do we cut down tall poppies instead of celebrating them?
There are now five different tax rates, designed to ping people harder as their income grows. Why do we tell our kids to study hard, save, and invest, but punish disproportionately if their work pays off?
We are a top destination for migrants, but also have one of the world’s largest diasporas. Why do so many come here seeking hope, only to give up and move on?
The answer, I believe, lies in a deep tension in our national character. It’s not new, but it’s getting sharper. You could call it a divide—but it’s more like two tribes, invisible yet powerful, shaping our future.
On one side, we have the doers, the pioneers. I call them changemakers.
These are the people who see the freedom to act not as a privilege, but as a responsibility. These are the people who saw me driving the Land Rover up Parliament’s steps for what it was. No rules were broken, nobody was hurt, we raised tens of thousands for Heart Kids New Zealand.
The flip side was the endless whingers who said I ‘should have asked permission.’ The interesting thing is many of them didn’t know who I should have asked. They just know everyone should ask someone. What a depressing, defeated way to think and live.
Changemakers don’t think that way. They’re the ones who put everything on the line to start a business, employ others, and keep going when the odds are against them. The ones who work hard, employ others, save for a home, raise kids, build communities. They believe that life is what you make of it.
And too often, they’re punished for it.
Tall poppy forever?
They’re taxed harder, regulated more tightly, lectured more condescendingly. They’re told their success is a problem, their ambition is selfish, and their values are outdated. But they are the backbone of this country—and many of them are in this room today.
This is who ACT stands for, and who we represent. We are the party of people who believe in letting you make a difference in your own life, not telling you how to live it.
But there’s another part of New Zealand and its influence is growing. The people building what I’ve called a Majority for Mediocrity. They would love nothing more than to go into lockdown again, make some more sourdough, and worry about the billions in debt another day.
They blame one of the most successful societies in history for every problem they have. They believe that ancestry is destiny. They believe people are responsible for things that happened before they were born, but criminals aren’t responsible for what they did last week.
Far from believing people can make a difference in their own lives, they believe that their troubles are caused by other people’s success. They look for politicians who’ll cut tall poppies down – politicians who say to young New Zealanders ‘if you study hard, get good grades, get a good job, save money, and invest wisely, we’ll tax you harder’.
It’s not about any one group or party—it’s a mindset. A creeping belief that life should be comfortable, not challenging. That fairness means flattening everyone to the same level, not lifting people up. That success must be questioned, not admired.
They see every problem through the lens of blame. They see society’s gains as someone else’s loss. They want safety without sacrifice, reward without risk, rights without responsibility. They speak the language of resentment, not aspiration. And they vote for politicians who promise comfort today, at the cost of opportunity tomorrow.
It’s a toxic mix: personal disappointment and ideological resentment. And it’s being used to manufacture a new generation of mediocrity voters—disillusioned, angry, and ready to believe that someone else is to blame.
And too often, that’s exactly what politicians have done.
Instead of fixing systems, they’ve chosen scapegoats.
They’ve blamed farmers for emissions, despite the different profile of methane.
They’ve blamed law-abiding firearm owners for crime, whether they committed one or not.
They’ve blamed landlords for housing shortages, even though they’re trying to help.
They’ve blamed employers for low wages, even though they compete for workers.
They’ve blamed successful business owners for prices.
That’s the lazy politics of envy and distraction. And it’ll lead us nowhere.
This is the opposite of the spirit that brought people to New Zealand. It is not progress—it is retreat.
But here’s the good news: that’s not inevitable. The short-term outlook is brighter. Interest rates are coming down. Inflation has been brought to heel – albeit in an uncertain global economic environment. The Government is no longer borrowing recklessly. We’re cutting red tape, restoring sanity to regulation, and pulling back from the brink of identity politics.
The Government’s deregulation effort
We’re fixing the CCCFA. It was meant to protect consumers, but in practice it punished responsible borrowers and turned your mortgage broker into a marriage counsellor. That’s not financial literacy—that’s madness.
We’ve reformed building material approvals, so you’re not paying double just because a product is made overseas. If it’s good enough for Australia, it should be good enough for us.
We’ve legalised granny flats—because why on earth should families have to fight councils to look after their own loved ones?
We’re rewriting early childhood education regulations—because we trust teachers to know how to care for children more than we trust clipboard-wielding bureaucrats.
We’re reviewing health and safety laws to make sure they actually keep people safe, instead of tying businesses up in fear and compliance.
We’re unblocking the pathways in agriculture and horticulture, cutting through the outdated rules that stop our farmers and growers from accessing the same products our global competitors already do.
Take the hairdressing and barbering industry. It faces rules that are barely enforced, make no difference to the underground half of the industry, but add costs nonetheless. So we’re just going to get rid of them.
We’re looking at labour laws to restore balance to give people the choice to work the hours they want, under conditions that suit them, not some centralised formula written for the benefit of union organisers.
Perhaps the biggest of the lot, the Resource Management Act, once the single biggest handbrake on housing, infrastructure, and industry in this country. It’s being rewritten to serve people, not paperwork, with property rights at the centre.
Why can’t young New Zealanders afford homes? Why are power bills so high? Why can’t I buy McDonald’s in Wanaka? Each question has a common answer. The legacy of these reforms will be more productive activity, more high-paying jobs, and affordable housing. That’s how we give young Kiwis confidence to build families and futures here in New Zealand, and I’m very proud of the role ACT and Simon Court have played.
The Regulatory Standards Bill
But of course, there’s nothing stopping a future government, one driven by the majority for mediocrity from reversing this agenda and piling on more regulation. That’s where the Regulatory Standards Bill comes in.
In a nutshell: If red tape is holding us back, because politicians find regulating politically rewarding, then we need to make regulating less rewarding for politicians with more sunlight on their activities. That is how the Regulatory Standards Bill will help New Zealand get its mojo back. It will finally ensure regulatory decisions are based on principles of good law-making and economic efficiency.
It requires politicians and officials to ask and answer certain questions before they place restrictions on citizens’ freedoms. What problem are we trying to solve? What are the costs and benefits? Who pays the costs and gets the benefits? What restrictions are being placed on the use and exchange of private property?
The law doesn’t stop politicians or their officials making bad laws. They can still make rules that don’t solve any obvious problem, whose costs exceed their benefits, whose costs fall unfairly on some at the expense of others, and that destroy people’s right to property.
They can do all of that, but the Regulatory Standards Bill will make it transparent that they’re doing it. It makes it easier for voters to identify those responsible for making bad rules. Over time, it will improve the quality of rules we all have to live under by changing how politicians behave.
All of this deregulation is rebuilding the ability for people to make a difference in their own lives. Government should be a partner in innovation, not a cautious overseer who sees risk as a reason to regulate. When we begin every conversation about change by asking, “What’s the worst that can happen?” instead of “What can we achieve?” we create barriers. We unintentionally penalize ambition and hold back the very people who have the vision and drive to grow New Zealand’s economy and job market.
In a high-cost economy, regulation isn’t neutral – it’s a tax on growth.
These are real wins. And ACT is proud to be at the heart of the coalition government delivering them.
Conclusion
We’re focused on fixing the system, not finding someone to blame. That’s what’s needed to make New Zealand a nation of pioneers, rather than a retirement village of resentment.
That’s the legacy we must honour, not with empty slogans or timid half-measures, or by finding a new big business to beat up on, but by recommitting to the principles that made New Zealand great in the first place: freedom, responsibility, equality before the law.
And ACT is here to make sure New Zealand chooses aspiration over envy, freedom over fear, excellence over mediocrity.
After all, it’s human creativity that is the secret sauce to a business’s success, the power of people to think, to build, to innovate, makes all the difference. The role of policy is not to command and control that creativity. It’s to unleash it.
That only happens when Government remembers its place—not above the people, but in service to them. When we treat citizens as adults with their own ambitions, not as passive recipients of government programmes.
When we respect that people have different values, different goals, and that there is no single ‘right’ way to live, only the right to live freely.
Now, the lockdown lovers will say: that sounds risky. That sounds like letting go. And they’re right. It is. But let’s be honest, every great leap forward has come from people willing to take risks. From those who trusted themselves more than they trusted the state.
The real risk is in doing nothing. In clinging to systems that are broken. In pretending that more regulation will fix what regulation broke in the first place. We can’t be a place where our best and brightest only see a future of getting cut down, so they take their talents elsewhere. We need to show them that their ambition is not only tolerated it is welcomed, and we back them to fulfil it.
We are not here to manage decline. We are here to enable growth.
That’s the promise of New Zealand. That’s the kind of country we’re building. That’s what brought our ancestors here in the first place.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a choice. A choice between two futures.
One where ambition is met with suspicion, and success is something to be taxed and tamed.
Or one where we cut back the red tape and back the people who take risks, work hard, and create something better not just for themselves, but for everyone around them.
We know which path ACT stands for. That is what the Government’s deregulation agenda is striving for – not to control, but to clear the way.
That’s why we’re rebuilding a culture of responsibility, not resentment. One where every person is treated not as part of a group, but as an individual with potential.
We cannot change our size, or the impact of the world’s largest economies. We can’t change our underlying history or culture, and we cannot quickly change our levels of education. What we can change is our policies.
There is a drive to reduce waste. There is a drive to get more money from overseas investment. The Regulatory Standards Bill will change how we regulate. The Resource Management Act is being replaced. Anti-money laundering laws are being simplified. Charter schools are opening, more roads are being built. These are all good things.
Norman Kirk once said, people everywhere need “someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work, and something to hope for”. It is still good advice for the success of any country.
I believe people are leaving because they feel let down. They’ve done their homework, got the grades, worked hard and saved money. And yet, life remains harder here than other places they could be. They’re ambitious people, but they are told success is not something to celebrate,
Bad regulation is at the heart of this. Make no mistake, in a country where you’re free to do as you please unless there’s a law against it, every extra law is a restriction on your basic freedoms, and I hear about it in nearly every field.
If we want New Zealand to be a place worth staying in, not just arriving to—we need to clear the path of needless regulations. And if we want to turn things around, we must start by trusting New Zealanders to be in charge of their own lives again.
Thank you to every New Zealander who’s taken a chance, whether it was sailing here generations ago, stepping off a plane just a few years back, or taking out a loan to start a business. However daunting the road ahead may seem, together we can make sure New Zealand’s best days are still to come.
