Why the Regulatory Standards Bill is a threat to disability communities

Imagine it’s 2028. The disability community has been campaigning for robust and enforceable accessibility standards, starting with housing and employment. We manage to get the Labour government of the day on board, and they introduce a bill to make it happen.

But there's a snag. This new accessibility bill championing our human rights, like every new law these days, has to get checked for its compatibility with the principles of the Regulatory Standards Act. The principles of this Act amount to putting corporate profit ahead of Te Tiriti and the public good, where corporations have the same legal rights as regular people.

The proposed accessibility bill involves putting some obligations on corporations to uphold human rights. Because of the Regulatory Standards Act, the Minister for Disability Issues is forced to explain why this is more important than financial considerations alone to Parliament.

Due to the strength of prior campaigning, none of that stops the Labour government of the day passing the Bill, so the accessibility standards become law. However, some housing developers and employers decide to go to court to argue that they might lose out on profit under these new obligations. Backed by the corporate principles of the Regulatory Standards Act, they win the court case.

Now the Government has to compensate (give money to) those developers and employers for the profit they might have lost. That scares the Government, so they decide to backtrack. They water down the new accessibility regulations till they're toothless. They confirm they won't be investigating accessibility standards in other areas of life at this time.

What's this about

At the moment, the ACT Party is pushing hard to pass the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB). They say it's about good lawmaking, but that’s only the case if you think good lawmaking should undermine Te Tiriti, human rights and environmental protections.

The RSB passing would make the above scenario a reality and pave the way to corporate control of the State. The gutting of disability support services last year is just one example of how the Government already tokenises consultation with disabled people and whānau, if it happens at all. Systematically eroding our human rights protections in favour of cost savings is exactly the kind of policy this dangerous Bill will keep enabling.

In fact, this Bill would change who holds power so significantly that ACT's last three tries to pass something similar all failed. If ACT succeeds at getting the RSB over the line now, future governments will find it hard to undo as corporations will hang on tight to it.

However, there's a short window where, if enough of us say how strongly we oppose this Bill, the Government might have to rethink its plans. We'll get to how you can do that soon, but first, here's three more crucial reasons to oppose this monstrosity.

The RSB undermines Te Tiriti

We all remember ACT’s most recent manipulative attempt to unilaterally reinterpret Te Tiriti, aiming to remove Māori sovereignty and self-determination. After massive public outrage, the Treaty Principles Bill was canned. Now ACT are championing the RSB to remove Te Tiriti from legislation, even though the Waitangi Tribunal told them to stop. The Bill sidesteps Te Tiriti in favour of corporations and puts individual freedoms over collective rights.

How is this relevant to our disability community? Tāngata whaikaha Māori, whānau hauā and whānau whaiora are tangata whenua and face discrimination as both disabled/mental health and Māori. Because of systemic inequities, disabled Māori have poorer health outcomes, additional barriers to education and less access to employment. Whānau hauā and whānau whaiora are up against poverty, lack of access to culture and reo, and the combination of colonial and ableist attitudes and barriers in all areas of life. It is essential that funding for our communities from central and local government is prioritised, but under the RSB, this would be a dream in the wind. Māori Mental Health Provisions advocated for under the overhaul of our mental health law would also be at risk. 

The RSB is anti-environment

Especially for those of us who are tangata whenua, connection to whenua is central to our wellbeing. But as climate pollution gets worse and extreme weather emergencies become more common, disabled people everywhere are too often left behind. This Bill will steamroll environmental protections in favour of corporate interests. Instead of polluters paying for their mess, all of us will be paying. Laws that put corporate profit above environmental good are bad for te taiao and what is bad for the environment is bad for all of us.

The RSB will entrench all the “isms”

You might remember last year when Hobsons Pledge took out a frontpage Herald ad inaccurately accusing Māori of stopping people from accessing the foreshore. Well, under the RSB, they can make that sort of racist and unfounded complaint to the newly established Regulatory Standards Board. The board will probably agree with them because their job is to follow the RSB's principles which, as we've established, sideline Te Tiriti entirely. A ruling like this would give Hobsons Pledge oxygen in the media and further embolden racist people and groups.

The same would be true for ableism, transphobia, workers' rights, migrant rights, you name it. Anyone will be able to complain to this Board that these laws about protecting particular communities don't line up with the RSB principles. Even though the recommendations the Board makes won't be binding, they will likely influence how the media, MPs and the public think about human rights.

Relatedly, it could get harder to hold disability services accountable for harm to disabled people if this Bill passes. An advocate recently urged Worksafe to prosecute IDEA Services after four people with learning disabilities choked to death living in their residential services last year. But Worksafe, which is responsible for regulating health and safety at work, has recently been told to focus more on educating and less on enforcing regulations - very much in line with the RSB's prioritising of business preferences that see safety rules as red tape, rather than important safeguards.

What can you do?

We need hundreds of thousands of people to make our opposition to this Bill clear so that the Government can't ignore us. We do this by what's called submitting on the Bill.

• Submit on the RSB here
• Your submission can be very short. Just make sure to say you oppose the Regulatory Standards Bill. If you want, explain why.
• Submit the form by 23 June, 1pm
• Tell everyone you know to submit!
• If filling in the form is tricky or not accessible, ask for help. Someone else can fill it in for you if you give them permission and tell them what you want to say.
• If you are a nerd like we are, check out this list of questions to get you thinking about the further harm the RSB could do to disability services 
• Follow Tania Waikato and Tina Ngata - their posts will send you no shortage of reminders to get your submissions in and provide heaps of shareable content so your mates do too!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The D*List Delivered!