NZ Government Aims to Tackle 49 Reforms in Its First 100 Days

National Party Prime Minister Christopher Luxon looks on during a post cabinet press conference at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand on Nov. 29, 2023. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Forty-nine actions in 100 days is the ambitious commitment of the incoming National Party-led coalition government in New Zealand.

Sworn in on Nov. 27 after three weeks of three-party coalition talks, new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said that Parliament will sit until Christmas to begin pushing through the changes.

Parliament traditionally adjourns on the Wednesday of the final week of the year, but the National Party wants to run right until Friday, Dec. 22.

Moves on Infrastructure

The government will move to repeal two new laws passed only recently, covering the planning process for all forms of development from a single house to a major infrastructure project, and replace them with the law that they, in turn, replaced—the Resource Management Act (RMA).

Developers and local authorities had long complained that the RMA artificially constrained the construction sector, with rules covering everything from protection of flora and fauna to water.

During the campaign, the man who is now National’s RMA reform minister, Chris Bishop, admitted that, “The RMA is broken, but any reform ... must actually improve things and be worth the considerable cost of change,” but committed the new government to “begin work on a longer-term programme to repeal and replace the RMA.”

A National Infrastructure Agency is planned within this term.

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Also on the agenda is the repeal of the Auckland fuel tax, an additional impost on motorists in New Zealand’s most populous city, earmarked to pay for transport infrastructure in the region.

That will be partly offset by putting a stop to the former Labour government’s plan to introduce light rail, an end to the clean car discount—a subsidy given to purchasers of EVs and hybrids—and government contribution to “Let’s Get Wellington Moving,” an organisation whose mission is to improve transportation in the nation’s capital but which was widely perceived as having achieved little despite spending $82.7 million on consultants.

It will instead build a second tunnel to the airport, and fund several major roading projects in the region, though not in the first hundred days.

Also in the transport sector, there will be an end to blanket speed limit reductions, and work will start on replacing the regulations that govern them. Further, planned fuel tax increases will not go ahead.

Law and Order

Law and order featured prominently in the campaigns of all three parties which now form the coalition government: National, the libertarian ACT, and nationalist NZ First, so it is another area in which a lot of work is planned in the early stage.

Gangs are a particular focus, with plans for legislation banning gang patches, stopping gang members from gathering in public, and stopping known gang offenders from communicating with one another.

Police will be given greater powers to search gang members for firearms, and gang membership will be considered an aggravating factor at sentencing.

Work will begin to “crackdown on serious youth offending,” though there is yet to be detail on this direction.

The previous government’s Prisoner Reduction Target will also be abolished, though there is no indication yet as to whether this will mean the building of more prisons, since the existing penal estate is regularly close to, or at, capacity (New Zealand has around 170 people in prison per 100,000 people, compared to the OECD average of around 147).

There will also be an end to “section 27 reports,” a part of the Sentencing Act 2002 which allows the court to “establish a cultural context for a defendant’s actions.”

Within the 100-day period, the new government also plans to introduce legislation to extend eligibility to offence-based rehabilitation programmes to remand prisoners.

Health and Education

Education was another target of all three government parties, with broad agreement that the curriculum had deviated too far from the basics of literacy and numeracy.

That has resulted in plans to require all primary and intermediate schools to teach an hour of reading, writing, and maths each per day starting in 2024, and the appointment of an expert group to redesign the English and maths curricula for students at that level.

While most of the new government’s planned health reforms have been welcomed—measures such as setting five major targets, including hospital wait times and access to cancer treatment—possibly the single most contentious move is to scrap what was hailed as a world-leading anti-smoking measure: stopping people born after January 2009 from ever being able to legally buy tobacco products.

The UK, which had earlier announced it planned to introduce legislation based on New Zealand’s law, has said it will do so regardless, while the move has led to criticism from health sector figures worldwide.

Meanwhile, with inflation at 5.6 percent but the cost of living widely seen by voters as out of control, the new government intends to make good on its election promise to change the focus of the Reserve Bank from keeping inflation between 1 and 3 percent to solely one of “price stability.”

Also contentious, and likely to be more so once the effect is felt, is the pledge to start reducing public sector expenditure, including consultant and contractor expenditure.

While the National Party refuses to put figures on this until it has more information, its coalition partner ACT went to the election saying 15,000 jobs should go.