In his first interview as Commerce Minister on this subject with Good Returns, Hodgson said the work on trans-Tasman harmonisation business laws, and a single economic market (SEM), is an important but secondary tier to the regulatory work now under way.
“It’s quite important the cascade of logic is clear. The primary move is to improve the New Zealand business environment, investment environment or savings environment, depending on which area of the Commerce portfolio you are looking at.
"And it’s also time to run the ruler over that stuff again, because it’s been 20 years since a lot of these rules were implemented. A lot has changed.”
That is the first step, and is the main driver of the changes – not the trans-Tasman harmonisation work.
The next step is to “also look and say, well, what are the Aussies up to? Is this a good chance for us to align what we are doing with what they have already done? Or conversely is it a good chance to let them know we are doing stuff and they could be putting similar stuff on their workbooks.”
Although some work has the single economic market as the prime focus - such as allowing securities listings in both markets with the same documentation – “most of the work has… a second tier of the logic.”
He says changes will be made to laws if they are right for the New Zealand environment. “If there’s an opportunity for SEM arising out of it, we’ll take it.”
The task force is currently wrapping up its first round of consultations and will shortly collate those and circulate a second round of consultations.
“That will have a bit more teeth or grunt or form to it. Then they’ll come back, probably around June, and say we’ve done our review, this is what we propose, these people are going to be annoyed, these people are going to like it, and it’s over to you sunshine.”
As for implementation of whatever the task force might come up with, Hodgson says he doesn’t know.
“I don’t know what I’m implementing yet.”
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