People’s Select Committee Gives Parliament a Piece of Their Mind

by Will Irvine

At 9am on Tuesday morning, community organisers from around Te-Whanganui-A-Tara gathered outside the steps of Parliament for a first-of-its-kind form of political protest: the People’s Select Committee. Participants spoke with emotions ranging from calm disappointment to anger, but all were united in their opposition to the Regulatory Standards Bill. 

The Regulatory Standards Bill, dubbed the “sibling” of the Treaty Principles Bill, has been widely criticised for its entrenchment of libertarian free-market ideas into Aotearoa’s legislative framework. Out of 23,000 submissions made to the Parliamentary Select Committee on the bill, preliminary reports suggest that just 0.33% supported its passage into law. Despite widespread opposition, however, Parliament has only allowed around 500 submissions to be orally presented to the committee, over a 30-hour window. 

Enter the People’s Select Committee. Announced less than a week before submissions began, the committee was a ramshackle affair, with a hastily assembled podium mimicking the format of the Parliamentary committee, which was meeting less than a few hundred metres away. 

The first speaker of the morning was emphatic in her opposition to the bill: “this bill seeks to solve a problem that does not exist”. The consensus among submitters was clear -- that the RSB was a cynical attempt at ensuring ACT’s presence is felt long after they leave government. Another speaker called ACT’s values “extreme”, and noted that the bill “hands extraordinary powers to its own author”. 

Whilst the protest was organised to draw attention to the exclusion of the public from the select committee process, one speaker also took the opportunity to critique the process itself. “Every time I have submitted to that committee, it has been a disempowering experience”. The select committee process has become a focus point for the protest movement in Aotearoa, but critics argue that it has yielded very few significant results in the face of politicians’ commitments to party politics and coalition agreements.

Despite the boiling anger beneath many speeches, the mood among the crowd was optimistic: “together, we killed David [Seymour]’s last despicable bill… together, we can kill this”.

The approach seems to have taken root. Former National MP Marilyn Waring has also convened a People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity. Submissions are open until the end of July.