Regulatory issues identified

The Productivity Commission was asked to make recommendations to improve the operation of regulation.

It has issued its final report, which found regulation quality checks were under strain, the country’s regulation struggled to keep up with change, more attention should be paid to the skills of regulatory staff, and that monitoring of regulators was not up to scratch.

The report found only 23% of the 1526 businesses surveyed agreed “regulatory staff are skilled and knowledgeable” and 25% agreed  “regulators understand the issues facing your organisation”.

“Business surveys showed low levels of confidence in the skills and knowledge of regulatory staff. Regulatory agencies face challenges in attracting, training and retaining key staff to meet these challenges. This is particularly the case in the finance sector, where the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Financial Markets Authority referred respectively to their vulnerability to losing specialist staff and difficulty in attracting people from overseas,” the report said.