Podcast: The steady growth of NZ regulation
In this episode, Eric talks to Derek Gill, an adjunct scholar at Victoria University, about new research conducted with colleagues that tracks the growth of New Zealand's regulatory state from 1908 to 2024, revealing a steady increase in regulation averaging 2.4% annual growth since 2008, regardless of which political party was in power.
The research challenges the common narrative about deregulation in the 1980s and shows that New Zealand's regulatory growth mirrors international trends, though more work is needed to fully understand secondary legislation and sector-specific patterns.
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You can read the paper The Growth in the Size of the New
Zealand Statute Book by Derek Gill, Stevie Shipman and Karl Simpson here.
Eric and Derek talk about the following graphs in this podcast episode which are available in the the paper linked above:
