Chris Bishop

I think most Kiwis would say yes.

I mean, if you think about just how hard it is to do

simple stuff to your house, how hard it is to build housing in this country, how long infrastructure takes and how many conditions are placed on infrastructure that does get built, you know, which is all my responsibility.

I think most reasonable people would say, yes, you know, we spend $1.3 billion a year on consenting costs alone for infrastructure.

It's basically, you know, it's the cost of transmission gully

on consenting costs.

That's just red tape, right?

That's not actually building anything.

That's just the consent.

So that's every year.

So it's a nightmare for the country.

And that's just in one sector alone.

And I think that's sort of the flip side of the point David was making yesterday about the vast size of government, the number of regulators, but also the number of regulations that apply in the system.

Well, there's a couple of things I'm doing in my space.

One is we're doing local government simplification and reform.

So we're going to end up with fewer councils as a result of the process we're underway on.

And we're also going to end up with fewer plans.

and fewer rules on the plans through RMA reform, and that's the big one.

So RMA reform, the new planning system we are building, is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reduce the number of plans, reduce the number of rules, standardise things.

You don't have to constantly be creating bespoke rules up and down the country, so building a house in Lower Hutt's different to building a house in Upper Hutt.